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Photographic 

Sciences 
Corporation 


23  WEST  MAIN  STREET 

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L\ 


CIHM/ICMH 

Microfiche 

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CIHM/ICMH 
Collection  de 
microfiches. 


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10X 

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7 

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i7y 

IfiX 

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32X 

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d'impression  ou  d'illustration  et  en  terminant  par 
la  dernidre  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
empreinte. 

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symbols  V  signifie  "FIN  ". 

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et  de  haut  en  bas,  en  prenant  le  nombre 
d'images  ndcessaire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
illustrent  la  methods. 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

pr.  JFidfee'e  |)iBtorical  Worfea. 

THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA,  with  some  account  of 

Ancient  America  and  the  Spanish  Conquest.     With  Maps. 

2  vols,  crown  8vo,  $4.00.  „,,„^,,„-,  1 

OLD  VIRGINIA  AND   HER  NEIGHBOURS.     2  vols. 

crown  8vo,  $4.00.  .  t^      •    -i  . 

Illustrated  Edition.     Containing  Portraits,  Maps,  Facsimiles, 

Contemporary  Views,  Prints,  and  other  Historic  Materials. 

2  vols.  8vo,  |8.oo,  net.  . 

THti  BEGINNINGS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND,  or  the  Puri- 

lai  Theocracy  in  its  Relations  to  Civil  and  Religious  Liberty. 

Crown  8vo,  $2.00.  . 

Illustrated  Edition.     Containing  Portraits,  Maps,  Facsimiles, 

Contemporary  Views,    Prints,   and  other  Historic  Materials. 

8vo,  J4.00,  net. 
THE  DUTCH  AND  QUAKER  COLONIES  IN  AMER- 
ICA.   With  8  Maps.     2  vols,  crown  8vo,  #400. 
Illustrated  Edition.     Containing  Portraits,  Maps,  Facsimiles, 

Contemporary  Views,  Prints,  and  other  Historic  Materials. 

2  vols.  8vo,  S8.00,  net.  __       „,.  ,    ., 

NEW  FRANCE  AND  NEW  ENGLAND.     With  Maps. 

Crown  8vo,  l^i.oo. 
THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION.     2  vols,  crown  Svo, 

lUuTrated  Edition.     Containing  Portraits,  Maps,  Facsimiles, 

Co'^lemporary  Views,  Prints,   and  other  Historic  Materials. 

2  vols.  Svo,  jJ8.oo,  net.  __.,,„ 

THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  OF  AMERICAN  HISTORY. 

1783-1789.     Crown  Svo,  JF2.00.  .        ,,  „       ■    -i 

Illustrated  Edition.     Containing   Portraits,   Maps.,  Facsimiles, 

Contemporary  Views,    Prints,   and  other  Historic  Materials. 

THE  Mlls^SIPPI   VALLEY  IN  THE  CIVIL  WAR. 

With  23  M.-ips  and  Plans.     Crown  Svo,  f  2.00. 
THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE.    In  Riverside  Library 

for  Vounu  People.     i6mo,  75  cents. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  FOR  SCHOOLS. 

With  Topical  Analysis,  Suggestive  Questions,  and  Directions 

'        forTeachers,  by  Frank  A.  Hill.     \2mo,  %i.oo,  net. 

I    riviL  GOVERNMENT  IN   THE    UNITED  STATES. 

"  Considered  with  some  Reference  to  its  Origins.  Crown 

Svo,  P 1. 00,  M^/.  .  .       ,    „,       t  J 

For  Mr.  Fiske's  Historical  and  Philosophical  IVtn-ks  and 
Essays  see  Pages  at  the  back  of  Volume  II. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  CO.,  Boston. 


r 


^     'W^  < 


'—-  c'  l\    I  \    O  ^O  //lC  ys 


I 


THE 

iSCOVHRV   OF   AMERICA 


^OME  ACCOUM-  u.-  V?'  ,i%f ERICA 

'iND  THE    ^f^AStSh    V i^rV^^tXs ?• 


jUii  V    FFSKE 

fN   TWO    VOt.L'MES 
VOL  i. 


T'lcn  I  unbar  th«  'fnttr»;  my  patha  Iwi^^f  ool 

"""♦le  exodu;-,  'A  r>:\*.\iA\<,     r  dinp<>rsc 

M«n  to  all  sliowt  'Ui  ii,.i.t  ;he  hoary  main. 

I  too  haw  aftt  Atid  aorr-^nes ; 
UlnMon  dwcMs  fur*'?»  »kt'h  the  wsvft. 
;  iniUe  sume  c<<a*t  »(<.     i?.,  ionie  ioiie  is]c 
5t>  distant  men,  .vN;  (fu  ;^  jio  thcie  or  die. 

Embssom 


"^F'    ■  .    .:-t^ 


f,>i>J,>r«    t,*^'i^  Kgw  YORK 


'\Mf' 


^:/',,  'v./(< 


THE 


DISCOVER/  OF  AMERICA 

WITH  SOME  A  ceo  [/NT  OF  ANCIENT  AMERICA 
AND  THE  SPANISH  CONQUEST 


m 


JOHN   FISKE 

IN  TWO   VOLUMES 
VOL.  I. 


Then  I  unbar  the  doors;  my  paths  lead  out 

The  exodus  of  nations ;  I  disperse 

Men  to  all  shores  that  front  the  hoary  main. 

I  too  have  arts  and  sorceries  ; 
Illusion  dwells  forever  with  the  wave. 
I  make  some  coast  alluring,  some  lone  isle 
To  distant  men,  who  must  go  there  or  die. 

Embison 


icuss^jssmm 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1892, 
Bt  JOHN  FISKE. 


All  rights  reserved. 


J50I 


TO 

EDWARD  AUGUSTUS   FREEMAN, 

A  SCHOLAR   WHO    INHERITS   THE   GIFT   OF   MIDAS,  AND 

TURNS   INTO  GOLD   WHATEVER   SUBJECT   HE 

TOUCHES,  I  DEDICATE  THIS  BOOK,  WITH 

GRATITUDE    FOR   ALL   THAT   HE 

HAS   TAUGHT   ME 


PREFACE. 


The  present  work  is  the  outcome  of  two  lines  of 
study  pursued,  with  more  or  less  interruption  from 
other  studies,  for  about  thirty  years.     It  will  be 
observed  that  the  book  has  two  themes,  as  different 
in  character  as  the  themes  for  voice  and  piano  in 
Schubert's  "  Friihlingsglaube,"  and  yet  so  closely 
related  that  the  one  is  needful  for  an  adequate 
comprehension  of  the  other.     In  order  to  view  in 
their  true  perspective  the  series  of  everts  com- 
prised in  the  Discovery  of  America,  one  needs  to 
form  a  mental  picture  of  that  strange  world  of 
savagery  and  barbarism  to  which  civilized  Euro- 
peans were  for  the  first  time  introduced  in  the 
course  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  in 
their  voyages  along  the  African  coast,  into  the 
Indian  and  Paxjific  oceans,  and  across  the  Atlantic. 
Nothing  that  Europeans   discovered  during  that 
stimng  period  was  so  remarkable  as  these  antique 
phases  of  human  society,  the  mere  existence  of 
which  had  scarcely  been  suspected,  and  the  real 
character  of  which  it  has  been  left  for  the  present 
generation  to  begin  to  understand.     Nowhere  was 


VI 


PREFACE. 


this  ancient  society  so  full  of  instructive  lessons  as 
in  aboriginal  America,  which  had  pursued  its  own 
course  of  development,  cut  off  and  isolated  from 
the  Old  World,  for  probably  more  than  fifty  thou- 
sand  years.  The  imperishable  interest  of  those 
episodes  in  the  Discovery  of  America  known  as 
the  conquests  of  Mexico  and  Peru  consists  chiefly 
in  the  glimpses  they  afford  us  of  this  primitive 
world.  It  was  not  an  uninhabited  continent  that 
the  Spaniards  found,  and  in  order  to  comprehend 
the  course  of  events  it  is  necessary  to  know  some- 
thing about  those  social  features  that  formed  a  large 
part  of  the  burden  of  the  letters  of  Colmnbus  and 
Vespucius,  and  excited  even  more  intense  and  gen- 
eral interest  in  Europe  than  the  purely  geograph- 
ical questions  suggested  by  the  voyages  of  those 
great  sailors.  The  descriptions  of  ancient  America, 
therefore,  which  form  a  kind  of  background  to  the 
present  work,  need  no  apology. 

It  was  the  study  of  prehistoric  Europe  and  of 
early  Aryan  institutions  that  led  me  by  a  natural 
sequence  to  the  study  of  aboriginal  America.  In 
1869,  after  sketching  the  plan  of  a  book  on  our 
Aryan  forefathers,  I  was  turned  aside  for  five  years 
by  writing  "  Cosmic  Philosophy."  During  that  in- 
terval I  also  wrote  "  Myths  and  Myth-Makers  "  as 
a  side-work  to  the  projected  book  on  the  Aryans, 
and  as  soon  as  the  excursion  into  the  field  of  gen- 
eral philosophy  was  ended,  in  1874,  the  work  on 


PREFACE. 


Vll 


that  book  was  resumed.  Fortunately  it  was  not 
then  carried  to  completion,  for  it  would  have  been 
sadly  antiquated  by  this  time.  The  revolution  in 
theory  concerning  the  Aryans  has  been  as  remark- 
able as  the  revolution  in  chemical  theory  which 
some  years  ago  introduced  the  New  Chemistry.  It 
is  becoming  eminently  probable  that  the  centre  of 
diffusion  of  Aryan  speech  was  much  nearer  to 
Lithuania  than  to  any  part  of  Central  Asia,  and 
it  has  for  some  time  been  quite  clear  that  the  state 
of  society  revealed  in  Homer  and  the  Vedas  is  not 
at  all  like  primitive  society,  but  very  far  from  it. 
By  1876  I  had  become  convinced  that  there  was 
no  use  in  going  on  without  widening  the  field  of 
study.  The  conclusions  of  the  Aryan  school  needed 
to  be  supplemented,  and  often  seriously  modified,  by 
the  study  of  the  barbaric  world,  and  it  soon  became 
manifest  that  for  the  study  of  barbarism  there  is 
no  other  field  that  for  fruitfulness  can  be  comj)ared 
with  aboriginal  America. 

This  is  because  the  progress  of  society  was  much 
slower  in  the  western  hemisphere  than  in  the  east- 
ern, and  in  the  days  of  Columbus  and  Cortes  it 
had  nowhere  "  caught  up  "  to  the  points  reached 
by  the  Egyptians  of  the  Old  Empire  or  by  the 
builders  of  Mycenae  and  Tiryns.  In  aboriginal 
America  we  therefore  find  states  of  society  pre- 
gferved  in  stages  of  development  similar  to  those  of 
our  ancestral  societies  in  the  Old  World  long  ages 


VUl 


PREFACE. 


before  Homer  and  the  Vedas.  Many  of  the  social 
phenomena  of  ancient  Europe  are  also  fomid  in 
aboriginal  America,  but  always  in  a  more  primitive 
condition.  The  clan,  phratry,  and  tribe  among 
the  Iroquois  help  us  in  many  respects  to  get  back 
to  the  original  conceptions  of  the  gens,  curia,  and 
tribe  among  the  Romans.  We  can  better  under- 
stand the  growth  of  kingship  of  the  Agamemnon 
type  whp-  we  have  studied  the  less  developed  type 
in  Montezuma.  The  house-communities  of  the 
southern  Slavs  are  full  of  interest  for  the  student 
of  the  early  phases  of  social  evolution,  but  the 
Mandan  round-house  and  the  Zuni  pueblo  carry  us 
much  deeper  into  the  past.  Aboriginal  American 
institutions  thus  afford  one  of  the  richest  fields  in 
the  world  for  the  application  of  the  comparative 
method,  and  the  red  Indian,  viewed  in  this  light, 
becomes  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  men ;  for 
in  studying  him  intelligently,  one  gets  down  into 
the  stone  age  of  hiunan  thought.  No  time  should 
be  lost  in  gathering  whatever  can  be  learned  of 
his  ideas  and  institutions,  before  their  character 
has  been  w'hoUy  lost  under  the  influence  of  white 
men.  Under  that  influence  many  Indians  have 
been  quite  transformed,  while  others  have  been  as 
yet  but  little  affected.  Some  extremely  ancient 
types  of  society,  stiU  preserved  on  this  continent 
in  something  like  purity,  are  among  the  most  in- 
structive monuments  of  the  past  that  can  now  be 


PREFACE.  ix 

found  in  the  world.     Such  a  type  is  that  of  the 
Moquis  of  northeastern  Arizona.     I  have  heard  a 
rumour,  which  it  is  to  be  hoped  is  ill-founded,  that 
there  are   persons  who  wish  the   United  States 
government  to  interfere  with  this  peaceful   and 
self-respecting  people,  break  up  their  pueWo  life, 
scatter  them  in  farmsteads,  and  otherwise  compel 
them,  against  their  own  wishes,  to  change  their 
habits  and  customs.     If  such  a  cruel  and  stupid 
thing  were  ever  to  be  done,  we  might  justly  be 
said  to  have  equalled  or   surpassed  the  folly  of 
those  Spaniards  who  used   to  make   bonfires   of 
Mexican  hieroglyphics.    It  is  hoped  that  the  pres- 
ent book,  in  which  of  course  it  is  impossible  to 
do  more  than  sketch  the  outlines  and  indicate  the 
bearings  of  so  vast  a  subject,  will  serve  to  awaken 
readers  to  the  interest  and  importance  of  American 
archaeology  for  the  general  study  of  the  evolution 
of  human  society. 

So  much  for  the  first  and  subsidiary  theme.  As 
for  my  principal  theme,  the  Discovery  of  America, 
I  was  first  drawn  to  it  through  its  close  relations 
with  a  subject  which  for  some  time  chiefly  occu- 
pied my  mind,  the  history  of  the  contact  between 
the  Aryan  and  Semitic  worlds,  and  more  particu- 
larly between  Christians  and  Mussulmans  about 
ihe  shores  of  the  Mediterranean.  It  is  also  in- 
teresting as  part  of  the  history  of  science,  and 
furthermore  as  connected  with  the  beginnings  of 


PREFACE. 


.\ 


one  of  the  most  momentous  events  in  the  career  of 
mankind,  the  colonization  of  the  barbaric  world  by 
Europeans.  Moreover,  the  discovery  of  America 
has  its  full  share  of  the  romantic  fascination  that 
belongs  to  most  of  the  work  of  the  Renaissance 
period.  I  have  sought  to  exhibit  these  different 
aspects  of  the  subject. 

The  present  book  is  in  all  its  parts  written  from 
the  original  sources  of  information.  The  work  of 
modern  scholars  has  of  course  been  freely  used, 
but  never  without  full  acknowledgment  in  text  or 
notes,  and  seldom  without  independent  verification 
from  the  original  sources.  Acknowledgments  are 
chiefly  due  to  Humboldt,  Morgan,  Bandelier,  Major, 
Varnhagen,  Markham,  Helps,  and  Harrisse.  To 
the  last-named  scholar  I  owe  an  especial  debt  of 
gratitude,  in  common  with  all  who  have  studied 
this  subject  since  his  arduous  researches  were 
begun.  Some  of  the  most  valuable  parts  of  his 
work  have  consisted  in  the  discovery,  reproduction, 
and  collation  of  documents ;  and  to  some  extent 
his  pages  are  practically  equivalent  to  the  original 
sources  inspected  by  him  in  the  course  of  years  of 
search  through  European  archives,  public  and  pri- 
vate. In  the  present  book  I  must  have  expressed 
dissent  from  his  conclusions  at  least  as  often  as 
agreement  with  them,  but  whether  one  agrees 
with  him  or  not,  one  always  finds  him  helpful  and 
stimulating.     Though  he  has  in  some  sort  made 


^f^^mmmmm 


PREFACE.  xi 

himself  a  Frenchman  in  the  course  of  his  labours, 
it  is  pleasant  to  recall  the  fact  that  M.  Harrisse 
is  by  birth  our  fellow-countryman  ;  and  there  are 
surely  few  Americans  of  our  time  whom  stu- 
dents of  history  have  more  reason  for  holding  in 
honour. 

I  have  not  seen   Mr.  Winsor's  "Christopher 
Colmnbus  "  in  time  to  make  any  use  of  it.    Within 
the  last  few  days,  while  my  final  chapter  is  going 
to  press,  I  have  received  the  sheets  of  it,  a  few 
days  in  advance  of  publication.     I  do  not  find  in 
it  any  references  to  sources  of  information  which 
I  have  not  already  fully  considered,  so  that  our 
differences  of  opinion  on  sundry  points  may  serve 
to  show  what  diverse  conclusions  may  be  drawn 
from  the  same  data.    The  most  conspicuous  differ- 
ence is  that  which  concerns  the  personal  character 
of  Columbus.     Mr.  Wiusor  writes  in  a  spirit  of 
energetic  (not  to  say  violent)  reaction  against  the 
absurdities  of  Eoselly  de  Lorgues  and  others  who 
have  tried  to  make  a  saint   of  Columbus;   and 
under  the  influence  of  this  reaction  he  offers  us  a 
picture  of  the  great  navigator  that  serves  to  raise 
a  pertinent  question.     No  one  can  deny  that  Las 
Casas  was  a  keen  judge  of  men,  or  that  his  stan- 
dard  of  right  and  wrong  was  quite  as  lofty  as  any 
one  has  reached  in  our  own  time.    He  had  a  much 
more  intimate  knowledge  of  Columbus  than  any 
modern  historian  can  ever  hope  to  acquire,  and  he 


sit 


PREFACE. 


always  speaks  of  him  with  warm  admiration  and 
respect.  But  how  could  Las  Casas  ever  have  re- 
spected the  feeble,  mean-spirited  driveller  whose 
portrait  Mr.  Winsor  asks  us  to  accept  as  that  of 
the  Discoverer  of  j^  merica  ? 

If,  however,  instead  of  his  biographical  estimate 
of  Columbus,  we  consider  Mr.  Winsor's  contribu- 
tions toward  a  correct  statement  of  the  difficult 
geographical  questions  connected  with  the  subject, 
we  recognize  at  once  the  work  of  an  acknowledged 
master  in  his  chosen  field.  It  is  work,  too,  of  the 
first  order  of  importance.  It  would  be  hard  to 
mention  a  subject  on  which  so  many  reams  of  dire- 
ful nonsense  have  been  written  as  on  the  discovery 
of  America ;  and  the  prolific  source  of  so  much 
foUy  has  generally  been  what  Mr.  Freeman  fitly 
calls  "  bondage  to  the  modem  map."  In  order  to 
understand  what  the  great  mariners  of  the  fifteenth 
and  sixteenth  centuries  were  trying  to  do,  and 
what  people  supposed  them  to  have  done,  one  must 
begin  by  resolutely  banishing  the  modern  map  from 
one's  mind.  The  ancient  map  must  take  its  place, . 
but  this  must  not  be  the  ridiculous  "  Orbis  Vete- 
ribus  Notus,"  to  be  found  in  the  ordinary  classical 
atlas,  which  simply  copies  the  outlines  of  court' 
tries  with  modern  accuracy  from  the  modern  map, 
and  then  scatters  ancient  names  over  them  !  Such 
maps  are  worse  than  useless.  In  dealing  with  the 
discovery  of  America  one  must  steadily  keep  before 


PREFACE. 


•  •ft 

Xlll 


one's  mind  the  quaint  notions  of  ancient  geogra* 
phers,  especially  Ptolemy  and  Mela,  as  portrayed 
upon  such  maps  as  are  reproduced  in  the  present 
volume.  It  was  just  these  distorted  and  hazy  notions 
that  swayed  the  minds  and  guided  the  movements 
of  the  great  discoverers,  and  went  on  reproducing 
themselves  upon  newly-made  maps  for  a  century 
or  more  after  the  time  of  Columbus.  Without 
constant  reference  to  these  old  maps  one  cannot 
begin  to  understand  the  circumstances  of  the  dis- 
covery of  America. 

In  no  way  can  one  get  at  the  heart  of  the  matter 
more  completely  than  by  threading  the  labyrinth 
of  causes  and  effects  through  which  the  western 
hemisphere  came  slowly  and  gradually  to  be  known 
by  the  name  America.  The  reader  will  not  fail  to 
observe  the  pains  which  I  have  taken  to  elucidate 
this  subject,  not  from  any  peculiar  regard  for  Amer- 
icus  Vespucius,  but  because  the  quintessence  of  the 
whole  geographical  problem  of  the  discovery  of 
the  New  World  is  in  one  way  or  another  involved 
in  the  discussion.  I  can  think  of  no  finer  instance 
of  the  queer  complications  that  can  come  to  sur- 
round and  mystify  an  increase  of  knowledge  too 
great  and  rapid  to  be  comprehended  by  a  single 
generation  of  men. 

In  the  solution  of  the  prol)lem  as  to  the  first 
Vespucius  voyage  I  follow  the  lead  of  Varnhagen, 
but  always  independently  and  with  the  documen- 


XIV 


PREFACE. 


tary  evidence  fully  in  sight.  For  some  years  I 
vainly  tried  to  pursue  Humboldt's  clues  to  some 
intelligible  conclusion,  and  felt  inhospitably  in- 
clined toward  Varnhagen's  views  as  altogether 
too  plausible ;  he  seemed  to  settle  too  many  diffi- 
culties at  once.  But  after  becoming  convinced 
of  the  spuriousness  of  the  Bandini  letter  (see 
below,  vol.  ii.  p.  94)  ;  and  observing  how  the  air 
at  once  was  cleared  in  some  directions,  it  seemed 
that  further  work  in  textual  criticism  would  be 
well  bestowed.  I  made  a  careful  study  of  the  dic- 
tion of  the  letter  from  Vespucius  to  Soderini  in  its 
two  principal  texts :  —  1.  the  Latin  version  of 
1507,  the  original  of  which  is  in  the  library  of 
Harvard  University,  appended  to  Waldseemiiller's 
"  CosmographisB  Introductio  " ;  2.  the  Italian  text 
reproduced  severally  by  Bandini,  Canovai,  and 
Varnhagen,  from  the  excessively  rare  original,  of 
which  only  five  copies  are  now  known  to  be  in 
existence.  It  is  this  text  that  Varnhagen  regards 
as  the  original  from  which  the  Latin  version  of 
1507  was  made,  through  an  intermediate  French 
version  now  lost.  In  this  opinion  Varnhagen  does 
not  stand  alone,  as  Mr.  Winsor  seems  to  think 
("  Christopher  Columbus,"  p.  540,  line  5  from 
bottom),  for  Harrisse  and  Avezac  have  expressed 
themselves  plainly  to  the  same  effect  (see  below, 
vol.  ii.  p.  42).  A  minute  study  of  this  text, 
with  all  its  quaint  interpolations  of  Spanish  and 


FREj'ACE. 


XV 


Portuguese  idioms  and  seafaring  phrases  into  the 
Italian  ground-work  of  its  diction,  long  ago  con- 
vinced me  that  it  never  was  a  translation  from  any- 
thing in  heaven  or  earth  or  the  waters  under  the 
earth.  Nobody  would  ever  have  translated  a  docu- 
ment into  such  an  extremely  peculiar  and  individ- 
ual jargon.  It  is  most  assuredly  an  original  text, 
and  its  author  was  either  Vespucius  or  the  Old 
Nick.  It  was  by  starting  from  this  text  as  prim- 
itive that  Varnhagen  started  correctly  in  his  inter- 
pretation of  the  statements  in  the  letter,  and  it 
was  for  that  reason  that  he  was  able  to  dispose  of 
so  many  difficulties  at  one  blow.  When  he  showed 
that  the  landfall  of  Vespucius  on  his  first  voyage 
was  near  Cape  Honduras  and  had  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  with  the  Pearl  Coast,  he  began  to  follow 
the  right  trail,  and  so  the  facts  which  had  puzzled 
evCi-ybody  began  at  once  to  fall  into  the  right 
places.  This  is  all  made  clear  in  the  seventh 
chapter  of  the  present  work,  where  the  general 
Tirgument  of  Varnhagen  is  in  many  points  strongly 
reinforced.  The  evidence  here  set  forth  in  con- 
nection with  the  Cantino  map  is  especially  signif- 
icant. 

It  is  interesting  on  many  accounts  to  see  the 
first  voyage  of  Vespucius  thus  elucidated,  though 
it  had  no  connection  with  the  application  of  his 
name  by  Waldseemiiller  to  an  entirely  different 
region  from  any  that  was  visited  upon  that  voyage. 


xfi 


PREFACE. 


The  real  significance  of  the  third  voyage  of  Ves- 
pucius,  in  connection  with  the  naming  of  America, 
is  now  set  forth,  I  believe,  for  the  first  time  in  the 
light  thrown  upon  the  subject  by  the  opinions  of 
Ptolemy  and  Mela.  Neither  Humboldt  nor  Major 
nor  Harrisse  nor  Vamhagen  seems  to  have  had  a 
firm  grasp  of  what  was  in  Waldseemiiller's  mind 
when  he  wrote  the  passage  photographed  below  in 
vol.  ii.  p.  136  of  this  work.  It  is  only  when  we 
keep  the  Greek  and  Roman  theories  in  the  fore- 
ground and  unflinchingly  bar  out  that  intrusive 
modern  atlas,  that  we  realize  what  the  Freiburg 
geographer  meant  and  why  Ferdinand  Columbus 
was  not  in  the  least  shocked  or  surprised. 

I  have  at  various  times  given  lectures  on  the 
discovery  of  America  and  questions  connected 
therewith,  more  especially  at  University  College, 
London,  in  1879,  at  the  Philosophical  Institution 
in  Edinburgh,  in  1880,  at  the  Lowell  Institute 
in  Boston,  in  1890,  and  in  the  course  of  my  work 
as  professor  in  the  Washington  University  at  St. 
Louis  ;  but  the  present  work  is  in  no  sense  what- 
ever a  reproduction  of  such  lectures. 

Acknowledgments  are  due  to  Mr.  Winsor  for 
his  cordial  permission  to  make  use  of  a  number  of 
reproductions  of  old  maps  and  facsimiles  already 
used  by  him  in  the  "  Narrative  and  Critical  His- 
tory of  America ; "  they  are  mentioned  in  the  lists 


1 


PREFACE. 


XVll 


of  illustrations.  I  have  also  to  thank  Dr.  Brinton 
for  allowing  me  to  reproduce  a  page  of  old  Mexican 
music,  and  the  Hakluyt  Society  for  permission  to 
use  the  Zeno  and  Catalan  maps  and  the  view  of 
Kakortok  church.  Dr.  Fewkes  has  very  kindly 
favoured  me  with  a  sight  of  proof-sheets  of  some 
recent  monographs  by  Bandelier.  And  for  cour- 
teous assistance  at  various  libraries  I  have  most 
particularly  to  thank  Mr.  Kiernan  of  Harvard 
University,  Mr.  Appleton  Griffin  of  the  Boston 
Public  Library,  and  Mr.  Uhler  of  the  Peabody 
Institute  in  Baltimore. 


for 
|)er  of 
ready 
His- 

lists 


There  is  onr  thing  which  I  feel  obliged,  though 
with  extreme  hesitation  and  reluctance,  to  say  to 
my  readers  in  this  place,  because  the  time  has 
come  when  something  ought  to  be  said,  and  there 
seems  to  be  no  other  place  available  for  saying  it. 
For  many  years  letters  —  often  in  a  high  degree 
interesting  and  pleasant  to  receive  —  have  been 
coming  to  me  from  persons  with  whom  I  am  not 
acquainted,  and  I  have  always  done  my  best  to 
answer  them.  It  is  a  long  time  sinco  such  letters 
came  to  form  the  larger  part  of  a  voluminous  mass 
of  correspondence.  The  physical  fact  has  assumed 
dimensions  with  which  it  is  no  longer  possible  to 
cope.  If  I  were  to  answer  all  the  letters  which 
arrive  by  every  mail,  I  should  never  be  able  to  do 
another  day's  work.     It  is  becoming  impossible 


XVlll 


PREFACE. 


1  I 
I  ) 


even  to  read  them  all ;  and  there  is  scarcely  time 
for  giving  due  attention  to  one  in  ten.  Kind 
friends  and  readers  will  thus  understand  that  if 
their  queries  seem  to  be  neglected,  it  is  by  no 
means  from  any  want  of  good  will,  but  simply  from 
the  lamentable  fact  that  the  day  contains  only 
four-and-twenty  hours. 


Cambrisoe,  October  25,  1891. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


1 

2,3 

4 

4,5 

6,7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12,13 

13,14 

15 

16 


The  American  aborigines     . 

Question  as  to  their  origin 

Antiquity  of  man  in  America 

Shell-mounds,  or  middens    . 

The  Glacial  Period 

Discoveries  in  the  Trenton  gravel 

Discoveries  in  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Minnesota 

Mr.  Cresson's  discovery  at  Claymont,  Delaware 

The  Calaveras  skull 

Pleistocene  men  and  mammals     .        .        , 
Elevation  and  subsidence      .... 

Waves  of  migration 

The  Cave  men  of  Europe  in  the  Glacial  Period 

The  Eskimos  are  probably  a  remnant  of  the  Cave  men  17-19 

There  was  probably  no  connection  or  intercourse  by 

water  between  ancient  America  and  the  Old  World  .  20 
There  is  one  great  American  red  race  ....  21 
Different  senses  in  which  the  word  "  race  "  is  used  21-23 
No  necessary  connection  between  differences  in  culture 

and  differences  in  race 23 

Mr.   Lewis  Morgan's  classification  of  grades  of  cul- 

t'lre 24-32 

Distinction  between  Savagery  and  Barbarism       .        .       25 

Origin  of  pottery 25 

Lower,  middle,  and  upper  status  of  savagery       .        .       26 
Lower  status  of  barbarism  ;  it  ended  differently  in  the 

two  hemispheres  ;  in  ancient  America  there  was  no 

pastoral  stage  of  development 27 


XX  CONTENTS, 

Importance  of  Indian  corn 28 

Tillage  with  irrigation 29 

Use  of  adobe-brick  and  stone  in  building    •       .«         .29 

Middle  status  of  barbarism 29,  30 

Stone  and  copper  tools  ......      30 

Working  o£  metals  ;  smelting  of  iron  ....      30 

Upper  status  of  barbarism 31 

The  alphabet  and  the  beginnings  of  civilization    .         .      32 
So-called  "  civilizations  "  of  Mexico  and  Peru      .         33,  34 
Loose  use  of  the  words  "  savagery  "  and  "  civilization  "      35 
Value  and  importance  of  the  term  "  barbarism  "  .  35,  36 

The  status  of  barbarism  is  most  completely  exemplified 
in  ancient  America  ......  36,  37 

Survival  of  bygone  epochs  of  culture  ;   work  of  the 

Bureau  of  Ethnology 37, 38 

Tribal  society  and  multiplicity  of  languages  in  aborigi- 
nal America 38, 39 

Tribes  in  the  upper  status  of  savagery  ;  Athabaskans, 

Apaches,  Shoshones,  etc 39 

Tribes  in  the  lower  status  of  barbarism  ;  the  Dakota 
group  or  family         .......       40 

The  Minnitarees  and  Mandans 41 

The  Pawnee  and  Arickaree  group        ....       42 

The  Maskoki  group 42 

The  Algonquin  group 43 

The  Huron-Iroquois  group 44 

The  Five  Nations 45-47 

Distinction  between  horticulture  and  field  agriculture  .       48 
Perpetual  intertribal  warfare,  with  torture  and  canni- 
balism        49-^1 

Myths  and  folk-lore 61 

Ancient  law 52, 53 

The  patriarchal  family  not  primitive    ....       63 

"Mother-right" 54 

Primitive  marriage       . 65 

The  system  of  reckoning  kinship  through  females  only      56 

Original  reason  for  the  system 67 

The  primeval  human  horde  ,         .         .         .         .  68, 69 

Earliest  family-group  ;  ths  clan 60 

««Exogamy" 60 


CONTENTS.  xxi 

?hratry  and  tribe         .......      61 

Effect  of  pastoral  life  upon  property  and  upon  the 

family .         61-63 

The  exogamous  clan  in  ancient  America      ...      64 
Intimate   connection  of  aboriginal  architecture  with 

social  life 65 

The  long  houses  of  the  Iroquois  .        .        .        ,         66, 67 

Summary  divorce 68 

Hospitality 68 

Structure  of  the  clan 69  70 

Origin  and  structure  of  the  phratry     ...         70,  71 

Structure  of  the  tribe 72 

Cross-relationships  between  clans  and  tribes  ;  the  Iro- 
quois Confederacy 72-74 

Structure  of  the  confederacy        .        .        .        .         75, 76 

The  "  Long  House  " 76 

Symmetrical  development  of  institutions  in  ancient 

America 77  78 

Circular  houses  of  the  Mandans  ....  79-81 
The  Indians  of  the  pueblos,  in  the  middle  status  of 

barbarism 82  83 

Horticulture   with  irrigation,    and  architecture   with 

adobe 83,84 

Possible  origin  of  adobe  architecture  .  .  .  84,  85 
Mr.  Cushing's  sojourn  at  Zuiii  .  .  •  .  .  .86 
Typical  structure  of  the  pueblo    ....         86-88 

Pueblo  society 89 

Wonderful  ancient  pueblos  in  the  Chaco  valley    .         90-92 

The  Moqui  pueblos 93 

The  clift-dwellings 93 

Pueblo  of  Zuai 93,  94 

Pueblo  of  Tlascala 94-96 

The  ancient  city  of  Mexico  was  a  great  composite 

pueblo 97 

The  Spanish  discoverers  could  not  be  expected  to  un- 
derstand  the   state   of   society   which   they   found 

there 97,98 

Contrast  between  feudalism  and  gentilism   ...      98 
Change  from   gentile   society  to  political  society  in 
Greece  and  Rome 99, 100 


_  mmammtMusiM.  mi 


xxu 


CONTENTS. 


I-  \ 

( 

J 

i: 

(I 


First  suspicions  as  to  the  erroneousness  of  the  Spanish 
accounts 101 

Detection  and  explanation  of  the  errors,  by  Lewis 
Morgan 102 

Adolf  Bandelier's  researches 

The  Aztec  Confederacy 

Aztec  clans  .... 

Clan  officers 

Rights  and  duties  of  the  clan 

Aztec  phratries    . 

The  tlatocan,  or  tribal  council 

The  cihuacoatl,  or  "  snake-woman  " 

The  tlacatecuhtli,  or  "  chief-of-men  "    . 

Evolution  of  kingship  in  Greece  and  Rome 

Medi^BTal  kingship       .... 

Montezuma  was  a  "priest-commander" 

Mode  of  succession  to  the  office   . 

Manner  of  collecting  tribute 

Mexican  roads 

Aztec  and  Ii'oquois  confederacies  contrasted 

Aztec  priesthood  ;  human  sacrifices 

Aztec  slaves 

The  Aztec  family         .... 

Aztec  property     ..... 

Mr.  Morgan's  rules  of  criticism   . 

He  sometimes  disregarded  his  own  rules 

Amusing  illustrations  from  his  remarks  on  "  Monte- 
zuma's Dinner " 126-128 

The  reaction  against  uncritical  and  exaggerated  state- 
ments was  often  carried  too  far  by  Mr.  Morgan    128, 129 

Great  importance  of  the  middle  period  of  barbarism   .     130 

The  Mexicans  compared  with  the  Mayas      .         .      131-133 

Maya  hieroglyphic  writing 132 

Ruined  cities  of  Central  America        .         .         .      134-138 

They  are  probably  not  older  than  the  twelfth  century      136 

Recent  discovery  of  the  Chronicle  of  Chicxulub  .         .     138 

Maya  culture  very  closely  related  to  Mexican      .         .     139 

The"Mound-BuUder8" 140-146 

The  notion  that  they  were  like  the  Aztecs   .        .        .    142 

Or,  perhaps,  like  the  Zu&is 143 


.  103 
104, 105 
.  106 
.  107 
.  108 
.  108 
.  109 
.  110 
.  Ill 
.  112 
.  113 
.  114 
114, 115 
.  116 
.  117 
.  118 
119, 120 

121. 122 

122. 123 
.  124 
.  125 
.  126 


CONTENTS. 


:xxiii 


144 


These  notions  are  not  well  sustained 

The  mounds  were  probably  built  by  diflFerent  peoples 
in  the  lower  status  of  barbarism,  by  Cherokees, 
tshavvnees,  and  other  tribes        .  144  14K 

It  is  not  likely  that  there  was  a  "  race  o'f  Mound  Build-  ' 

Society  in  America  at  'the  time  of  the  Discovery  had     ^^ 
reached  stages  similar  to  stages  reached  by  east- 

el^lie^    '*'"''"'^''  P'*'^^''  ^^*^  °"  ''^^y  "^'^^^^^^ 
^^^^' 146,147 


CHAPTER  II. 

PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 

Stones  of  voyages  to  America  before  Columbus ;  the 

Chinese    .... 
The  Irish      ...  •         •         . 

Blowing  and  drifting  ;  Cousin,  of  Dieppe     .*        .' 
Ihese  stories  are  of  small  value  . 
But  the  case  of  the  Northmen  is  quite  diflFerent 
Ihe  Vikmg  exodus  from  Norway 
Founding  of  a  colony  in  Iceland,  a.  d.  874  . 
Icelandic  literature 
Discovery  of  Greenland,  A.  d.  876 

Eric  the   Red,  and  his  colony  in  Greenl'and, 
yo6  . 

Voyage  of  Bjarni  Herjulfsson      .* 
Conversion  of  the  Northmen  to  Christianity 
Leif  Ericsson's  voyage,  a.  d.   1000;   Helluland 

Markland 
Leif's  winter  in  Vinland 
Voyages  of  Thorvald  and  Thorstein 
Thoriinn  Karlsefni.  and  his  unsuccessful  attempt  to 

tound  a  colony  in  Vinland,  a.  p.  1007-10  167-169 

Freydis,  and  her  evil  deeds  in  Vinland,  1011-12       ]  70  171 

Voyage  into  Baffin's  Bay,  1135    .         .  ^^g 

Description  of  a  Viking  ship  discovered  at  SandeHord' 

'"^*^^^"y 173-175 


148 
.  149 
.  150 
.  150 
.  151 

151, 152 
.  153 
.  154 

155, 156 

L.  D. 

157-161 
.  162 
.  163 
and 

.  164 

165, 166 

167 


'I^^I.VMH»li^Mm'|l|«lll«   13 


XXIV 


CONTENTS. 


To  what  extent  the  climate  of  Greenland  may  have 

changed  within  the  last  thousand  years     .         .      176, 177 
With  the  Northmen  once  in  Greenland,  the  discovery 

of  the  American  continent  was  inevitable  .         .     178 

Ear-marks  of  truth  in  the  Icelandic  narratives     .      179, 180 

Northern  limit  of  the  vine 181 

Length  of  the  winter  day 182 

Indian  corn 182, 183 

Winter  weather  in  Vinland 184 

Vinland  was   probably  situated   somewhere  between 
Cape  Breton  and  Point  Judith  .....     185 

Further  ear-marks  of  truth  ;  savages  and  barbarians 
of  the  lower  status  were  unknown  to  mediaeval  Eu- 
ropeans    ........      185, 186 

The  natives  of  Vinland  as  described  in  the  Icelandic 

narratives 187-193 

Meaning  of  the  epithet  "  Skrselings  "  .         .        .      188, 189 
Personal  appearance  of  the  Skrajlings  ....     189 

The  Skrse lings  of  Vinland  were  Indians,  — very  likely 
Algonquins        ........     190 

The  "balista"  or  "demon's  head"       .         .        .      191,192 

The  story  of  the  "  uniped  " 193 

Character  of  the  Icelandic  records  ;  misleading  asso- 
ciations with  the  word  "  saga  "  ....     194 

The  comparison  between  Leif  Ericsson  and  Agamem- 
non, made  by  a  committee  of  the  Massachusetts  His- 
torical Society,  was  peculiarly  unfortunate  and  in- 
appropriate     .......      194, 197 

The  story  of  the  Trojan  War,  in  the  shape  in  which  we 

find  it  in  Greek  poetry,  is  pure  folk-lore  .        .         .     195 
The  Saga  of  Eric  the  Red  is  not  folk-lore    .         .         .     196 
Mythical  and  historical  sagas       .         .         .         .         .     197 

The  western  or  Hauks-bdk  version  of  Eric  the  Red's 
Saga         .........    198 

The  northern  or  Flateyar-b6k  version  ....     199 

Presumption  against  sources  not  contemporary    .         .    200 
Hank  Erlendsson  and  his  manuscripts  .         .         .     201 

Tlie   story   is   not  likely  to  have  been  preserved  to 
Hauk's  time  by  oral  tradition  only    ....    202 


Allusions  to  Vinland  in  other  Icelandic  documents    202-207 


CONTENTS.  XXV 

Eyrbyggja  Saga  ....  ...    203 

The  abbot  Nikulas,  etc 204 

Ari  Fr<5dhi  and  his  works 204 

His  significant  allusion  to  Vinland        ....    205 

Other  references 206 

Differences  between  Hauks-b6k  and  Flateyar-b6k  ver- 
sions          207 

Adam  of  Bremen 203 

Importance  of  his  testimony 209 

His  misconception  of  the  situation  of  Vinland  .  .  210 
Summary  of  the  argument  .....  211-213 
Absurd  speculations  of  zealous  antiquarians  .  213-215 
The  Dighton  inscription  was  made  by  Algonquins,  and 

has  nothing  to  do  with  the  Northmen  .  .  213, 214 
Governor  Arnold's  stone  winf'*nill  ....  215 
There  is  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the  Northmen 

founded  a  colony  in  Vinland 216 

No  archaeological  remains  of  them  have  been  found 

south  of  Davis  strait 217 

If  the  Northmen  had  founded  a  successful  colony,  they 

would  have  introduced  domestic  cattle  into  the  North 

American  fauna        .......    218 

And  such  animals  could  not  have  vanished  and  left  no 

trace  of  their  existence 219, 220 

Further  fortunes  of  the  Greenland  colony  .  .  .  221 
Bishop  Eric's  voyage  in  search  of  Vinland,  1121  .         .    222 

The  ship  from  Markland,  1347 223 

The  Greenland  colony  attacked  by  Eskimos,  1349  .  224 
Queen  Margaret's  monopoly,  and  its  baneful  effects  .  225 
Story  of  the  Venetian  brothers,  Nicol6  and  Antonio 

Zeno 226 

Nicol6  Zeno  wrecked  upon  one  of  the  Faeroe  islands  .  227 
He  enters  the  service  of  Henry  Sinclair,  Earl  of  the 

Orkneys  and  Caithness     ......    228 

Nicolo's  voyage  to  Greenland,  cir.  1394  .  .  .  229 
Voyage  of  Earl  Sinclair  and  Antonio  Zeno  .  .  229, 230 
Publication  of  the  remains  of  the  documents  by  the 

younger  Nico'.i)  Zeno,  1558        .....     231 

The  Zeno  map 232, 233 

Queer  transformations  of  names  ....     234-236 


XXVI 


CONTENTS. 


The  name  Fceroislander  became  Frislanda     . 

The  narrative  nowhere  makes  a  claim  to  the  "dis- 
covery of  America"  

The  "  Ziehnmi "  of  the  narrative  means  Henry  Sin- 
clair   

Bardsen's  "  Description  of  Greenland  "        .        .         . 

The  monastery  of  St.  Olaus  and  its  hot  spring 

Volcanoes  of  the  north  Atlantic  ridge  .... 

Fate  of  Gunnbjorn's  Skerries,  1456      .... 

Volcanic  phenomena  in  Greenland 

Estotiland 

Drogio 

Inhabitants  of  Drogio  and  the  countries  beyond  . 

The  Fisherman's  return  to  Frislanda    .... 

Was  the  account  of  Drogio  woven  into  the  narraiive 
by  the  younger  Nicol6  ? 

Or  does    it   represent  actual  experiences    in   North 
America  ?         . 

The  case  of  David  Ingram,  1568 

The  case  of  Cabeza  de  Vaca,  1528-36  .... 

There  may  have  been  unrecorded  instances  of  visits  to 
North  America 

The  pre-Columbian  voyages  made  no  real  contributions 
to  geographical  knowledge 

And  were  in  no  trup  sense  a  discovery  of  America 

Beal  contact  between  the  eastern  and  western  hemi- 
sphere was  first  established  by  Columbus 


236 


237 


.  238 

.  239 

.  240 

.  241 

.  242 
242,243 

.  244 

.  245 

.  246 

.  247 


243 

249 
250 
251 

252 

253 
254 

255 


CHAPTER  III. 

EUROPE   AND  CATHAY. 

Why  the  voyages  of  the  Northmen  were  not  followed 


up 


Ignorance  of  their  geographical  significance 
Lack  of  iustrnments  for  ocean  navigation     . 
Condition  of  Europe  in  the  year  1000  . 
It  was  not  such  as  to  favour  colonial  enterprise 
The  outlook  of  Europe  was  toward  Asia 
Routes  of  trade  between  Europe  and  Asia  . 


.  256 

.  257 

.  257 
258, 259 

.  260 

.  261 

.  262 


CONTENTS. 


xxvii 


Claudius  Ptolemy  and  his  knowledge  of  the  earth 

Early  mention  of  China 

The  monk  Cosmas  Indicopleustes 

Shape  of  the  earth,  according  to  Cosmas 

His  knowledge  of  Asia 

The  Nestorians     . 

•  •  • 

Effects  of  the  Saracen  conquests  . 

Constantinople  in  the  twelfth  eentury  . 

The  Crusades       .         .         .         .       ,  _ 

Barbarizing  character  of  Turkish  conquest 

General  effects  of  the  Crusades    . 

The  Fourth  Crusade     .... 

Rivalry  between  Venice  and  Genoa      . 

Centres  and  routes  of  mediaeval  trade 

Effects  of  the  Mongol  conquests  . 

Cathay,  origin  of  the  name  . 

Curpini  and  Rubruquis 

First  knowledge  of  an  eastern  ocean  beyond  Cathay    .' 

The  data  were  thus  prepared  for  Columbus  ;  but  as 
yet  nobody  reasoned  from  these  data  to  a  practical 
conclusion         ..... 

The  Polo  brothers         .... 
Kublai  Khan's  message  to  the  Pope     .... 
Marco  Polo  and  his  travels  in  Asia       .         .         .281  282 
First  recorded  voyage  of  Europeans  around  the  Indo-  ' 
Chinese  peninsula     .         .         .         .         ,         ^  ogo 

Return  of  the  Polos  to  Venice 283 

Marco  Polo's  book,  written  in  prison  at  Genoa,  1299  ; 

its  great  contributions  to  geographical  knowledge  284,  285 
Prester  John         .         .  oq- 

trriffins  and  Arimaspians 286 

The  Catalan  map,  1375 288  289 

Other  visits  to  China 287-291 

Overthrow  of  the  Mongol  dynasty,  and  shutting  up  of 

China 291 

First  rumours  of  the  Molucca  islands  and  Japan  .         .     292 
The  accustomed  routes  of  Oriental  trade  were  cut  off 

in  the  fit    cnth  century  by  the  Ottoman  Turks         .     293 
Necessity  .or  finding  an  «  outside  route  to  the  Indies "     294 


.  263 
.  264 
.  265 

266, 267 
.  268 
.  268 
.  269 
.  270 

270-274 
.  271 
.  272 
.  273 
.  274 

275, 276 

.  277 

.  277 

.  278 

278 


279 

280 
281 


ZXVIU 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  SEARCH    FOR  THE  INDIES. 

EASTWARD  OS  PORTUGUESE  ROUTE. 

Question  as  to  whether  Asia  could  be  reached  by  sail- 
ing around  Africa 295 

Views  of  Eratosthenes  ......    296 

Opposing  theory  of  Ptolemy 297 

Story  of  the  Phoenician  voyage  in  the  time  of  Necho  298-300 

Voyage  of  Hanno 300,  301 

Voyages  of  Sataspes  and  Eudoxus        ....    302 

Wild  exaggerations 303 

Views  of  Pomponius  Mela 304, 305 

Ancient  theory  of  the  five  zones  ....     306, 307 
The   Inhabited  World,  or  CEcumene,  and  the  Anti- 
podes         308 

Curious  notions  about  Taprobane  (Ceylon)  .        .        .    309 
Question  as  to  the  possibility  of  crossing  the  torrid 

zone 309 

Notions  about  sailing  "  up  and  down  hill "  .         .     310,  311 

Superstitious  fancies 311, 312 

Clumsiness  of  ships  in  the  fifteenth  century  .        .     312 

Dangers  from  famine  and  scurvy  ....  013 
The  mariner's  compass  ;  an  interesting  letter  from  Bru- 
nette Latin!  to  Guido  Cavalcanti  .  .  .  313-315 
Calculating  latitudes  and  longitudes  ....  315 
Prince  Henry  the  Navigator  ....  316-326 
His  idea  of  an  ocean  route  to  the  Indies,  and  what  it 

might  bring 318 

The  Sacred  Promontory 319 

The  Madeira  and  Canary  islands  .        .         .     320-322 

Gil  Eannes  passes  Cape  Bojador 323 

Beginning  of  the  modern  slave-trade,  1442  .         .         .     323 
Papal  grant  of  heathen  countries  to  the  Portuguese 

crown 324,325 

Advance  to  Sierra  Leone 326 

Advance  to  the  Hottentot  coast    ....      326,  327 
Note  upon  the  extent  of  European  acquaintance  with 


i 


CONTENTS. 


XZIX 


savagery  and  the  lower  forms  of  barbarism  previous 

to  the  fifteenth  century 327-329 

Effect  of  the  Portuguese  discoveries  upon  the  theories 

of  Ptolemy  and  Mela 329, 330 

News  of  Prester  John  ;  Covilham's  journey  .  .  331 
Bartholomew  Dias  passes  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and 

enters  the  Indian  ocean 332 

Some  effects  of  this  discovery 333 

Bartholomew  Columbus  took  part  in  it  .  .  .  333 
Connection  between  these  voyages  and  the  work  of 

Christopher  Columbus 334 

CHAPTER  V. 


THE   SEARCH   FOR    THE   INDIES. 
WESTWARD  OR  SPAXISU  ROUTE. 

Sources  of  information  concerning  the  life  of  Colum- 
bus ;  Las  Casas  and  Ferdinand  Columbus         .        .     335 
The  Biblioteca  Colombina  at  Seville    .         .        .     336, 337 

Bernaldez  and  Peter  Martyr 338 

Letters  of  Columbus 338 

Defects  in  Ferdinand's  information      .        .        .     339, 340 

Researches  of  Henry  Harrisse 341 

Date  of  the  birth  of  Columbus  ;  archives  of  Savona     .    342 

Statement  of  Bernaldez 343 

Columbus's  letter  of  September,  1501 ....  344 
The  balance  of  probability  is  in  favour  of  1436  .  .  345 
The  family  of  Domenico  Colombo,  and  its  changes  of 

residence 346,347 

Columbus  tells  us  that  he  was  bom  in  the  city  of 

Genoa 348 

His  early  years 349-351 

Christopher  and  his  brother  Bartholomew  at  Lisbon  351, 352 

Philippa  Moiiiz  de  Perestrelo 352 

Personal  appearance  of  Columbus  ....  353 
His  marriage,  and    life  upon    the  bland  of    Porto 

Santo 353,354 

The  king  of  Portugal  asks  advice  of  the  great  astrono- 
mer Toscanelli 355 


ktxx 


CONTENTS. 


II  > 


Toscauelli's  first  letter  to  Columbus  .  .  .  356-361 
His  second  letter  to  Columbus  ....  361, 362 
"Who  first  suggested  the  fe.asibleness  of  a  westward 

route  to  the  Indies  ?     Was  it  Columbus  ?        .         .    363 

Perhaps  it  was  Toscanelli 363,  364 

.Note  on  the  date  of  Toscanelli's  first  letter  to  Colum- 

'     bus 365-367 

The  idea,  being  naturally  suggested  by  the  globular 

form  of  the  earth,  was  as  old  as  Aristotle         .     368, 369 

Opinions  of  ancient  writers 370 

Opinions  of  Cliristian  writers  .....  371 
The  « Imago  Mundi "  of  Petrus  AUiacus  .  .  372, 373 
Ancient  estimates  of  the  size  of  the  globe  and  the 

length  of  the  (Ecumene 374 

Toscanelli's  calculation  of  the  size  of  the  earth,  and  of 

the  position  of  Japan  (Cipango)        .         .         .      375, 376 
Columbus's  opinions  of  the  size  of  the  globe,  the  length 

of  the  CEcumene,  and   the  width  of  the  Atlantic 

ocean  from  Portugal  to  Japan  .         .         .      377-380 

There  was  a  fortunate  mixture  of  truth  and  error  in 

these  opinions  of  Columbus 381 

The  whole  point  and  purport  of  Columbus's  scheme 

lay  in  its  promise  of  a  route  to  the  Indies  shorter 

than  that  which  the  Portuguese  were  seeking  by 

way  of  Guinea 381 

Columbus's  speculations  on  climate  ;  his  voyages  to 

Guinea  and  into  the  Arctic  ocean     ....     382 
He  may  have  reached  Jan  Mayen  island,  and  stopped 

at  Iceland 383,384 

The   Scandinavian  hypothesis    that  Columbus  "must 

have  "  heard  and  understood  the  story  of  the  Vin- 

land  voyages     .......     384, 385 

It  has  not  a  particle  of  evidence  in  its  favour  .  .  385 
It  is  not  probable  that  Columbus  knew  of  Adam  of 

Bremen's  allusion  to  Vinland,  or  that  he  would  have 

understood  it  if  he  had  read  it 386 

It  is  doubtful  if  he  would  have  stumbled  upon  the 

story  in  Iceland 387 

If  he  had  heard  it,  he  would  probably  have  classed  it 

with  such  tales  as  that  of  St.  Brandau's  isle     .        .    388 


■■  ,1 

;i 
:  I 


CONTENTS. 


XXZl 


393 

393 

394 
395 


He  could  not  possibly  have  obtained  from  such  a 
source  his  opinion  of  the  width  of  the  ocean     .      388,  389 

If  he  had  known  and  understood  the  Vinland  story,  he 
had  the  strongest  motives  for  proclaiming  it  and  no 
motive  whatever  for  concealing  it     .         .         .      390-392 

No  trace  of  a  thought  of  Vinland  appears  in  any  of  his 
voyages    .         

Why  did  not  Norway  or  Iceland  utter  a  protest  in 

1493? 

The  idea  of  Vinland  was  not  associated  with  the  idea 

of  America  until  the  seventeenth  century 
Recapitulation  of  the  genesis  of  Columbus's  scheme     . 
Martin  Behaim's  improved  astrolabe    .         .         .      395,  396 
Negotiations  of   Columbus  with  John  II.   of  Portu- 
gal     396,397 

The  king  is  persuaded  into  a  shabby  trick    .         .         .     398 
Columbus  leaves  Portugal  and  enters  into  the  service 

of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  1486  ••  .  .  398-400 
The  junto  at  Salamanca,  1486  .  .  • .  .  .  401 
Birth  of  Ferdinand  Columbus,  August  15,  1488  .  .  401 
Bartholomew  Columbus  returns  from  the  Cape  of  Good 

Hope,  December,  1487 402, 403 

Christopher  visits  Bartholomew  at  Lisbon,  cir.  Sep- 
tember, 1488,  and  sends  him  to  England  .         .     404 
Bartholomew,  after  mishaps,  reaches  England  cir.  Feb- 
ruary,  1490,   and    goes    thence   to   France   before 

1492 405-407 

The  duke  of  Medina-Celi  proposes  to  furnish  the  ships 
for  Columbus,  but  the  queen  withholds  her  con- 
sent   408,409 

Columbus  makes  up  his  mind  to  get  his  family  to- 
gether and  go  to  France,  October,  1491  .      409,  410 
A  change  of  fortune  ;  he  stops  at  La  Rdbida,  and  meets 

the  prior  Juan  Perez,  who  writes  to  the  queen  .     411 

Columbus  is  summoned  back  to  court  ....     411 
The  junto  before  Granada,  December,  1491  .      412, 413 

Surrender  of  Granada,  January  2,  1492       .         .         .     414 
Columbus  negotiates  with  the  queen,  who  considers  his 

terms  exorbitant 414-416 

■jinterposition  of  Luis  de  Santangel       ....    410 


Xxxil  CONTENTS. 

Agreement  between  Columbus  and  the  sovereigns        .    417 

Cost  of  the  voyage 418 

Dismay  at  Palos  . 419 

The  three  famous  caravels 420 

Delay  at  the  Canary  islands 421 

Martin  Behaim  and  his  globe  ....  422,  423 
Columbus  starts  for  Japan,  September  6,  1492  .  .  424 
Terrors  of  the  voyage  :  —  1.  Deflection  of  the  needle  .     425 

2.  The  Sargasso  sea 426,  427 

3.  The  trade  wind 428 

Impatience  of  the  crews 428 

Change  of  course  from  W.  to  W.  S.  W  .  .  429,  430 
Discovery  of  land,  October  12,  1492  ....  431 
Guanahani :  which  of  the  Bahama  islands  was  it  ?  .  432 
Groping  for  Cipango  and  the  route  to  Quinsay  .  433,  434 
Columbus  reaches  Cuba,  and  sends  envoys  to  flud  a 

certain  Asiatic  prince 434, 435 

He  turns  eastward  and  Pinzon  deserts  him  .         .         .  435 

Columbus  arrives  at  Hayti  and  thinks  it  must  be  Japan  436 
His  flagship  is  wrecked,  and  he  decides  to  go  back  to 

Spain        .........  437 

Building  of  the  blockhouse.  La  Navidad      .         .         .  438 

Terrible  storm  in  mid-ocean  on  the  return  voyage        .  439 

Cold  reception  at  the  Azores        .....  440 

Columbus  is  driven  ashore  in  Portugal,  where  the  king 

is  advised  to  have  him  assassinated  ....  440 

But  to  offend  Spain  so  grossly  would  be  imprudent  .  441 
Arrival  of  Columbus  and  Pinzon  at  Palos  ;  death  of 

Pinzon 442 

Columbus  is   received  by  the   sovereigns  at   Barce- 
lona  443,444 

General  excitement  at  the  news   that  a  way  to  the 

Indies  had  been  found 445 

This  voyage  was  an  event  without  any  parallel  in  his- 
tory .        ,        c 446 


CONTENTS. 


.  ••• 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS. 

The  Discovery  of  America  was  a  gradual  process  447,  448 
The  letters  of  Columbus  to  Santangel  and  to  Sanchez  .  449 
Versification  of  the  story  by  Giuliano  Dati  .  .  .  460 
Earliest  references  to  the  discovery  .  .  .  .  461 
The  earliest  reference  in  English  ....  462 
The  Portuguese  claim  to  the  Indies     ....    453 

Bulls  of  Pope  Alexander  VI 464-468 

The  treaty  of  Tordesillas 469 

Juan  Rodriguez  Fonseca,  and  his  relations  with  Colum- 
bus       460-462 

Friar  Boyle 462 

Notable  persons  who  embarked  on  the  second  voyage  .    463 

Departure  from  Cadiz 464 

Cruise  among  the  Cannibal  (Caribbee)  islands  .  .  465 
Fate  of  the  colony  at  La  Navidad        ....    466 

Building  the  town  of  Isabella 467 

Exploration  of  Cibao 467,468 

Westward  cru'.se  ;  Cape  Alpha  and  Omega         .     468-470 

Discovery  of  Jamaica 471 

Coasting  the  south  side  of  Cuba 472 

The  "  people  of  Mangon  " 473 

Speculations  concerning  the  Golden  Chersonese   .     474-476 

A  solemn  expression  of  opinion 477 

Vicissitudes  of  theory 477, 478 

Arrival  of  Bartholomew  Columbus  in  Hispaniola  478,  479 
Mutiny  in  Hispaniola  ;  desertion  of  Boyle  and  Marga- 

rite 479,480 

The  government  of  Columbus  was  not  tyrannical         .     481 

Troubles  with  the  Indians 481, 482 

Mission  of  Juan  Aguado 482 

Discovery  of  gold  mines,  and  speculations  about  Ophir  483 
Founding  of  San  Domingo,  1496 .         .        .  .        .     484 

The  return  voyage  to  Spaiu  ......     485 

Edicts  of  1495  and  1497 480,487 

Vexatious  conduct  of  Fonseca  ;  Columbus  loses  his 
temper ^^7 


rrxiv 


CONTENTS. 


Departure  from  Sau  Lucar  on  the  third  voyage  .        .    488 

The  belt  of  calms 489-491 

Trinidad  and  the  Orinoco 491,  492 

Speculations  as  to  the  earth's  shape  ;  the  mountain  of 

Paradise 494 

Relation  of  the  "  Eden  continent "  to  "  Cochin  China  "     495 

Discovery  of  the  Pearl  Coast 495 

Columbus  arrives  at  San  Domingo  ....  496 
Roldan's  rebellion  and  Fonseca's  machinations  .  496, 497 
Gama's  voyage  to  Hindustan,  1497  ....  498 
Fonseca's  creature,  Bobadilla,  sent  to  investigate  the 

troubles  in  Hispaniola 499 

He  imprisons  Columbus 500 

And  sends  him  in  chains  to  Spain  ....  601 
Release  of  Columbus  ;  his  intervi'i^w  with  the  sover- 


eigns 


502 
603 


How  far  were  the  sovereigns  responsi '•^e  for  Bobadilla  ? 
Ovando,  another  creature  of  Fonseca,  appointc-d  gov- 
ernor of  Hispaniola  .......      503, 504 

Purpose  of  Columbus's  fourth  voyage,  'jo  find  a  pas- 
sage   from   the   Caribbee   waters   int)   the   Indian 

ocean 50-4, 606 

.  506 
.  507 
.  608 
.  509 
.  510 
.  511 


The  voyage  across  the  Atlantic    . 

Columbus  not  allowed  to  stop  at  San  E'  -mingo 

His  arrival  at  Cape  Honduras 

Cape  Gracias  a  Dios,  and  the  coast  of  Veragua 

Fruitless  search  for  the  strait  of  Malacca     . 

?'^atile  attempt  to  make  a,  settlement  in  Veragua 

Jolumbus  is  shipwrecked  on  the  copst  of  Jamaica ; 

shameful  conduct  of  Ovando 512 

Columbus's  last  return  to  Spain   .....     613 
His  death  at  Valladolid,  May  20,  1506         .         .         .513 
*'  Nuevo  Mundo  ; "  arms  of  Ferdinand  Columbus      514, 515 
When  Columbus  died,  the  fact  that  a  New  World  had 
been  discovered  by  him  had  not  yet  begun  to  dawn 
upon  his  mind,  or  upon  the  mind  of  any  voyager  or 
any  writer 515, 516 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


66 

80 
86 
88 
90 
92 


Portrait  of  the  author  .        .        .        Frontispiece 

View  and  ground-plan  of  Seneca-Iroquois  long  house 

reduced  from  Morgan's  Houses  and  House-Life  of  the 

American  Aborigines 

View,  cross-section,  and  ground-plan  of  Mandan  round 

house,  ditto 

Ground-plan  of  Pueblo  Hungo  Pavie,  ditto  . 
Restoration  of  Pueblo  Hungo  Pavie,  ditto    . 
Restoration  of  Pueblo  Bonito,  ditto 
Ground-plan  of  Pueblo  Penasca  Blanca,  ditto 
Ground-plan  of  so-called  "  House  of  the  Nuns "  at 

Uxmal,  ditto      •.....,  133 

Map  of  the  East  Bygd,  or  eastern  settlement  of  the 
Northmen  in  Greenland,  reduced  from  Rafn's  Anti- 

quitates  A  mericanre iqq  ^gj 

Ruins  of  the  church  at  Kakortok, /rom  Major's  Voyages  ' 
of  the  Zeiii,  published  by  the  Hakluyt  Society      .        .     222 

Zeno  Map,  cir.  1400,  ditto 232, 233 

Map  of  the  World  according  to  Claudius  Ptolemy,  cir.  ' 
A.  D.  ]50,  an  abridged  'sketch  after  a  map  in  Bun- 
bur  fs  History  of  Ancient  Geography  .       Facing    265 
Two  sheets  of  the  Catalan  Map,  1375,  from   Yule's 

Cathay,  published  by  the  Hakluyt  Society    .        .     288, 289 
Map  of  the  World  according  to  Pomponius  Mela,  cir. 
A.  D.  50,  from  Winsor's  Narrative   and  Critical  His- 
tory of  America 

Map  illustrating  Portuguese  voyages  on  the  coast  of 

Africa, //-om  a  sketch  by  the  author     .... 

loscanolli's  Map,  1474,  redrawn  and  improved  from  a 

sketch  in  Winsor's  America         .        .        .      Facing 


304 


324 


351 


XXZVl 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


•U\ 


Annotations  by  Columbus,  reduced  from  a  photograph 
in  Harrisse's  Notes  on  Columbus        ....     373 

Sketch  of  Martin  Behaim's  Globe,  1492,  preserved  in 
tht  city  hall  at  Nuremberg,  reduced  to  Mercator's 
projection  and  sketched  by  the  author  .        .        .     422, 423 

Sketch  of  Martin  Behaim's  Atlantic  Ocean,  with  out- 
line of  the  American  continent  superimposed,  from 
Winsor's  America 429 

Map  of  the  discoveries  made  by  Columbus  in  his  first 
and  second  voyages,  sketched  by  the  author        .        .    469 

Map  of  the  discoveries  made  by  Columbus  in  his  thud 
and  fourth  voyages,  ditto 493 

Arms  of  Ferdinand  Columbus,  from  the  title-page  of 
Earrisse*s  Femand  Colomb        .       .        .        .       i    515 


I;,.. 


i!ii 


.,.^,^^^._.3,„jj,,^^ 


THE  DISCOVERY   OP  AMERICA. 


CHAPTER  L 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 

When  the  civilized  people  of  Europe  first  be- 
came  acquainted  with  the  continents  of  North  and 
South  America,  they  found  them  inhabited  by  a 
race  of  men  quite  unlike  any  of  the  races  with 
which  they  were  familiar  in  the  Old  World.  Be- 
tween the  various  tribes  of  this  aboriginal  Ameri- 
can race,  except  in  the  sub-arctic  redon,  „ 

,  1  .  o        y    The  American 

tnere  is  now  seen  to  be  a  general  phys-  aborigines. 
ical  likeness,  such  as  to  constitute  an  American 
type  of  mankind  as  clearly  recognizable  as  those 
types  which  we  call  Mongolian  and  Malay,  though 
far  less  pronounced  than  such  types  as  the  Aus- 
tralian or  the  negro.     The  most  obvious  charac- 
teristics possessed  in   common   by  the  American 
aborigines  are  the  copper-coloured  or  rather  the 
cinnamon-coloured  complexion,  along  with  the  high 
cheek-bones  and  small  deepset  eyes,  the  straight 
black  hair  and  absence   or  scantiness  of   beard. 
With  regard  to  stature,  length  of  limbs,  massive- 
ness  of  frame,  and  shape  of  skull,  considerable 


■  iPtV'yMMihjin4AkA*,« 


2 


THE  DISCOVEBY  OF  AMERICA. 


Sip 


divergencies  may  be  noticed  among  the  various 
American  tribes,  as  indeed  is  also  the  case  among 
the  members  of  the  white  race  in  Eurojie,  and  of 
other  races.  With  regard  to  culture  the  differ- 
ences have  been  considerable,  although,  with  two 
or  three  apparent  but  not  real  exceptions,  there 
was  nothing  in  pre-Columbian  America  that  could 
properly  be  called  civilization  ;  the  general  condi- 
tion of  the  people  ranged  aU  the  way  from  sav- 
agery to  barbarism  of  a  high  type. 

Soon  after  America  was  proved  not  to  be  part 
of  Asia,  a  puzzling  question  arose.  Whence  came 
these  "  Indians,"  and  in  what  manner  did  they  find 
their  way  to  the  western  li(3mis23here.  Since  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century  discoveries  in 
geology  have  entirely  altered  onr  mental  attitude 
toward  this  question.  It  was  formerly  argued 
upon  the  two  assumptions  that  the  geographical 
relations  of  land  and  water  had  been  always  pretty 
much  the  same  as  we  now  find  them,  and  that  all 
the  racial  differences  among  men  have  arisen  since 
the  date  of  the  "Noachian  Deluge,"  which  was 
Question  as  to  generally  placed  somewhere  between 
their  origin.      ^^^  r.^^^  three   tliousaud  years  before 

the  Christian  era.  Hence  inasmuch  as  Euro- 
pean tradition  knows  nothing  of  any  such  race  as 
the  Indians,  it  was  supposed  that  at  some  time 
within  the  historic  period  they  must  have  moved 
eastward  from  Asia  into  America ;  and  thus 
"  there  was  felt  to  be  a  sort  of  specidative  neces- 
sity for  discovering  points  of  resemblance  between 
American  languages,  myths,  and  social  observances 
and  those  of  the  Oriental  world.     Now  the  abori* 


^1 


11  %aX'riirr 


.S..U/  .*^;^^^""l'«V:i-fW- 


.'  X-a^'Ur.i^.^  *ii'....  - 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


8 


^nes  of  this  Continent  were  made  out  to  be  Kam- 
tchatkans,  and  now  Chinamen,  and  again  they  were 
shown,  with  quaint  erudition,  to  be  remnants  of 
the  ten  tribes  of  Israel.  Perhaps  none  of  these 
theories  have  been  exactly  disproved,  but  they 
have  all  been  superseded  and  laid  on  the  shelf."  ^ 

^  See  my  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,  p.  148.  A  good  suc- 
cinct account  of  these  various  theories,  monuments  of  wasted  in- 
genuity, is  given  in  Short's  North  Americans  of  Antiquity,  chap, 
iii.  The  most  ehiborate  statement  of  the  theory  of  an  Israelite 
colonization  of  America  is  to  be  found  in  the  ponderous  tomes  of 
Lord  Kingsborough,  Mexican  Antiquities,  London,  1831-48,  9  vols, 
elephant-folio.  Such  a  theory  was  entertained  by  the  author  of 
that  curious  piece  of  literary  imposture,  The  Book  of  Mormon.  In 
this  book  we  are  told  that,  when  the  tongues  were  confounded 
at  Babel,  the  Lord  selected  a  certain  Jared,  with  his  family  and 
friends,  and  instructed  them  to  build  eight  ships,  in  which,  after 
a  voyage  of  344  days,  they  were  brought  to  America,  where  they 
"did  build  many  mighty  cities,"  and  "prosper  exceedingly." 
But  after  some  centuries  they  perished  because  of  their  iniquities. 
In  the  reign  of  Zedekiah,  when  calamity  was  impending  over 
Judah,  two  brothers,  Neplii  and  Laman,  under  divine  guidance 
led  a  colony  to  America.  There,  says  the  veracious  chronicler, 
their  descendants  became  great  nations,  and  worked  in  iron,  and 
had  stuffs  of  silk,  besides  keeping  plenty  of  oxen  and  sheep. 
(Ether,  ix.  18,  19;  x.  23,  24.)  Christ  appeared  and  wrought 
many  wonderful  works;  people  spake  with  tongues,  and  the 
dead  were  raised.  (3  Nephi,  xxvi.  14,  15.)  But  aboxit  the  close 
of  the  fourth  century  of  our  era,  a  terrible  war  between  Laman- 
ites  and  Nephites  ended  in  the  destruction  of  the  latter.  Some 
two  million  warriors,  with  their  wives  and  children,  having  been 
slaughtered,  the  prophet  Mormon  escaped,  wth  his  son  Moroni, 
to  the  "hill  Cumorah,"  hard  by  the  "  waters  of  Ripliancum,"  or 
Lake  Ontario.  {Ether,  xv.  2,  8,  11.)  There  they  hid  the  sacred 
tablets,  which  remained  concealed  until  they  were  miraculously 
discovered  and  translated  l)y  Joseph  Smith  in  182T.  There  is,  of 
course,  no  element  of  tradition  in  this  story.  It  is  all  pure  fiction, 
and  of  a  very  clumsy  soi-t,  such  as  might  easily  be  devised  by  an 
ignorant  man  accustomed  to  the  language  of  tlie  Bible  ;  and  of 
course  it  w.-is  suggested  by  the  old  notion  of  the  Israelitish  origin 
of  the  red  men.  The  references  are  to  The  Book  of  Mormon,  Salt 
Lake  City ;   Deseret  News  Co. ,  1885. 


'-^4ri  A  r/««h-'M«*lA«fWiUlhlAMfca« 


M.ziBniCrM»2!^-v  ).•  ^ 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


■|^-v 


The  tendency  of  modern  discovery  is  indeed  to- 
ward agreement  with  the  time-honoured  tradition 
which  makes  the  Ohl  Workl,  and  perhaps  Asia, 
the  earliest  dwelling-place  of  mankind.  Competi- 
tion has  been  far  more  active  in  the  famia  of  the 
eastern  hemisphere  than  in  that  of  the  western, 
natural  selection  has  accordingly  residted  in  the 
evolution  of  higher  forms,  and  it  is  there  that  we 
find  both  extinct  and  surviving  species  of  man's 
nearest  collateral  relatives,  those  tailless  half- 
himian  apes,  the  gorilla,  chimpanzee,  orang,  and 
gibbon.  It  is  altogether  probable  that  the  people 
whom  the  Spaniards  found  in  America  came  by 
migration  from  the  Old  World.  But  it  is  by  no 
means  probable  that  their  migration  occurred 
within  so  short  a  period  as  five  or  six  thousand 
Antiquity  of  ycars.  A  scrics  of  observations  and 
America.  discovcrics  kept  up  for  the  last  half- 
century  feeem  to  show  that  North  America  has  been 
continuously  inhabited  by  human  beings  since  the 
earliest  Pleistocene  times,  if  not  earlier. 

The  first  group  of  these  observations  and  dis- 
coveries relate  to  "  middens  "  or  shell-heaps.  On 
the  banks  of  the  Damariscotta  river  in  Maine  are 
some  of  the  most  remarkable  shell-heaps  in  the 
world.  With  an  average  thickness  of  six  or  seven 
feet,  they  rise  in  places  to  a  height  of  twenty-five 
feet.  They  consist  almost  entirely  of 
huge  oyster-shells  often  ten  inches  in 
length  and  sometimes  much  longer.  The  shells 
belong  to  a  salt-water  species.  In  some  places 
"  there  is  an  appearance  of  stratification  covered 
by  an  alternation  of  shells  and  earth,  as  if  the 


8helI-moundo. 


i 


jt-.--.i|-,'f,K«y;lj»W»,.>p>M>M^i^-f.^^^-, 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  6 

deposition  of  shells  had  been  from  time  to  time  in- 
terrupted, and  a  vegetable  mould  had  covered  the 
surface."  In  these  heaps  have  been  found  frag- 
ments of  pottery  and  of  the  bones  of  such  edible 
animals  as  the  moose  and  deer.  "  At  the  very 
foundation  of  one  of  the  highest  heaps,"  in  a  sit- 
uation which  must  for  long  ages  have  been  undis- 
turbed, Mr.  Edward  Morse  "  found  the  remains  of 
an  ancient  fire-place,  where  he  exhiuned  charcoal, 
bones,  and  pottery."  ^  The  significant  circum- 
stance is  that  "at  the  present  time  oysters  are 
only  found  in  very  small  numbers,  too  small  to 
make  it  an  object  to  gather  them,"  and  so  far  as 
memory  and  tradition  can  reach,  such  seems  to 
have  been  the  case.  The  great  size  of  the  heap, 
coupled  with  the  notable  change  in  the  distribution 
of  this  moUusk  since  the  heap  was  abandoned,  im- 
plies a  very  considerable  lapse  of  time  since  the 
vestiges  of  hmnan  occupation  were  first  left  here» 
Similar  conclusions  have  been  drawn  from  the 
banks  or  mounds  of  shells  on  the  St.  John's  river 
in  Florida,^  on  the  Alabama  river,  at  Grand  Lake 
on  the  lower  Mississippi,  and  at  San  Pablo  in  the 
bay  of  San  Francisco.  Thus  at  various  points 
from  Maine  to  California,  and  in  connection  with 
one  particular  kind  of  memorial,  we  find  records 
of  the  presence  of  man  at  a  period  midoubtedly 
prehistoric,  but  not  necessarily  many  thousands  of 
years  old- 

1  Second  Annual  Report  of  the  Peabody  Museum  of  American 
Archaeology,  etc.,  p.  18. 

^  Visited  in  186(3-74  by  Professor  Jeffries  Wyman,  and  described 
in  his  Fresh-Water  ohell  Mounds  of  the  St.  John's  River,  Cam> 
bridge,  1875. 


m 


"-•**"--•'  '-Jt-'.--''!:^--- 


\  0  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

The  second  group  of  discoveries  carries  us  back 
;  much  farther,  even  into  the  earlier  stages  of  that 

widespread  gla^iation  which  was  the  most  remark- 
j  able  feature    of  the  Pleistocene   period.     At  the 

'I  periods  of  greatest  cold  "  the  continent  of  North 

■  The  Glacial      Amorica  was  deeply  swathed  in  ice  as 

I  ^""°<*'  fa:  south   as  the  latitude  of   Philadel- 

phia, while  giaeiers   descended  into  North  Caro- 
;  lina."  ^     The  valleys  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  also 

I  supported  enormous  glaciers,  and  a  similar  state  of 

things  existed  at  the  same  time  in  Europe.  These 
periods  of  intense  cold  were  alternated  with  long 
interglacial  periods  during  which  the  climate  was 
warmer  than  it  is  to-day.  Concerning  the  anti- 
quity of  the  Pleistocene  age,  which  was  character- 
ized by  such  extraordinary  vicissitudes  of  heat  and 
cold,  there  has  been,  as  in  all  questions  relating  to 
geological  time,  much  conflict  of  opinion.  Twenty 
years  ago  geologists  often  argued  as  if  there  were 
an  unlimited  fund  of  past  time  upon  which  to 
draw ;  but  since  Sir  William  Thomson  and  other 
I  physicists  emphasized  the  point  that  in  an  anti- 

quity very  far  from  infinite  this  earth  must  have 
i  been  a  molten  mass,  there  has  been  a  reaction. 

In  many  instances  further  study  has  shown  that 
less  time  was  needed  in  order  to  effect  a  given 
change  than  had  formerly  been  supposed ;  and  so 
there  has  grown  up  a  tendency  to  shorten  the  time 
assigned  to  geological  periods.  Here,  as  in  so 
many  other  cases,  the  truth  is  doubtless  to  be 
sought  within  the  extremes.  If  we  adopt  tlie 
magnificent  argument  of  Dr.  CroU,  which  seems 

1  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,  p.  39. 


fc 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  7 

to  me  still  to  hold  its  ground  against  all  adverse 
criticism,^  and  regard  the  Glacial  epoch  as  coin- 
cident with  the  last  period  of  high  eccentricity  of 
the  earth's  orbit,  we  obtain  a  residt  that  is  moder- 
ate and  probable.  That  astronomical  period  be- 
gan about  240,000  years  ago  and  came  to  an  end 
about  80,000  years  ago.  During  this  period  the 
eccentricity  was  seldom  less  than  .04,  and  at  one 
time  rose  to  .0569.  At  the  present  time  the  eccen- 
tricity is  .01G8,  and  nearly  800,000  years  will  pass 
before  it  attains  such  a  point  as  it  reached  during 
the  Glacial  epoch.  For  the  last  50,000  years  the 
departure  of  the  earth's  orbit  from  a  circular  form 
has  been  exceptionally  small. 

Now  the  traces  of  the  existence  of  men  in  North 
America  during  the  Glacial  epoch  have  in  recent 
years  been  discovered  in  abundance,  as  for  exam- 
ple, the  palseolithic  quartzite  implements  found 
in  the  drift  near  the  city  of  St.  Paul,  which  date 
from  toward  the  close  of  the  Glacial  epoch  ;  ^  the 
fragment  of  a  hmnan  jaw  fouad  in  the  red  clay 
deposited  in  Minnesota  during  an  earlier  part  of 

1  Croll,  Climate  and  Time  in  their  Geological  Relations,  New 
York,  1875 ;  Discussions  on  Climate  and  Cosmology,  New  York, 
1880 ;  Archibald  Geikie,  Text  Book  of  Geology,  pp.  23-29,  883- 
000,  London,  1882  ;  J.xmes  Geikie,  The  Great  Ice  Age,-pp.  04-136, 
New  York,  1874  ;  Prehistoric  Europe,  pp.  558-562,  London,  1881 ; 
Wallace,  Island  Life,  pp.  101-225,  New  York,  1881.  Some  objec- 
tions to  Croll's  theory  may  be  found  in  Wright's  Ice  Age  in  North 
jlmerica,  pp.  405-505,  58.5-595,  New  York,  1889.  I  have  given 
a  brief  account  of  the  theory  in  my  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist, 
pp.  57-70. 

2  See  Miss  F.  E.  Babbitt,  "  Vestiges  of  Glacial  Man  in  Minne- 
sota," in  Proceedings  of  the  American  Association,  vol.  xxxii., 
1883. 


1  ^ 


8  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


that  epoch ;  ^  the  noble  collection  of  palaeoliths 
found  by  Dr.  C.  C.  Abbott  in  the  Trenton  gravels 
in  New  Jersey  ;  and  the  more  recent  discoveries 
of  Dr.  Metz  and  Mr.  H.  T.  Cresson. 

The  year  1873  marks  an  era  in  American  archae- 
ology as  memorable  as  the  year  1841  in  the  in- 
vestigation of  the  antiquity  of  man  in  Europe. 
With  reference  to  these  problems  Dr.  Abbott 
occupies  a  position  similar  to  that  of  Boucher  de 
;  \  Perthes  in  the  Old  World,  and  the  Trenton  valley 

is  coming  to  be  classic  ground,  like  the  valley  of 
the  Somme.  In  April,  1873,  Dr.  Abbott  published 
his  description  of  three  rude  implements  which  he 
had  found  some  sixteen  feet  below  the  surface  of 
the  ground  "  in  the  gravels  of  a  bluff  overlooking 
the  Delaware  river."     The  implements 

(  DiBcoveries  in  .,  .  t,iti 

j  the  Trenton      wcrc  m  placc  m  an  undisturbcd  deposit, 

and  could  not  have  found  their  way 
thither  in  any  recent  time  ;  Dr.  Abbott  assigned 
them  to  the  age  ol  the  Glacial  drift.  This  was 
the  beginning  of  a  long  series  of  investigations, 
in  which  Dr.  Abbott's  work  was  assisted  and  sup- 
Si;!  plemented  by  Messrs.  Whitney,  Carr,  Putnam, 
!  Shaler,   Lewis,   Wright,    Haynes,   Dawkins,   and 

other  eminent  geologists  and  archaeologists.     By 

1888  Dr.  Abbott  had  obtained  not  less  than  60 

i|iLjj,  implements  from  various  recorded  depths  in  the 

*P  gravel,  while  many  others  were  found  at  depths 

j;  not  recorded  or  in  the  talus  of  the  banks.^     Three 

human  skulls  and  other  bones,  along  with  the  tusk 

1  See  N.  H.  Winchell,  Annual  Report  of  the  State  Geologist  oj 
Minnesota,  1877,  p.  60. 
*  Wright's  Ice  Age  in  North  America^  p.  516. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


9 


of  a  mastodon,  have  been  discovered  in  the  same 
gravel.  Careful  studies  have  been  made  of  the 
conditions  under  which  the  gravel-banks  were  de- 
posited and  their  probable  age  ;  and  it  is  generally 
agreed  that  they  date  from  the  later  portion  of 
the  Glacial  period,  or  about  the  time  of  the  final 
recession  of  the  ice-sheet  from  this  region.  At 
that  time,  in  its  clir  ite  and  general  aspect,  New 
York  harbour  must  have  been  much  like  a  Green- 
land fiord  of  the  present  day.  In  1883  Professor 
Wright  of  Oberlin,  after  a  careful  study  of  the 
Trenton  deposits  and  their  relations  to  the  terrace 
and  gravel  deposits  to  the  westward,  predicted 
that  similar  palaeolithic  implements  woidd  be 
found  in  Ohio.  Two  years  afterward,  the  predic- 
tion was  verified  by  Dr.  Metz,  who  found  a  true 
palaiolith  of  black  flint  at  Madisonville,  in  the 
Little  Miami  valley,  eight  feet  below  the  surface. 
Since  then  further  discoveries  have  been  made  in 
the  same  neighl)ourhood  by  Dr.  Metz,  and  in  Jack- 
son county,  Indiana,  by  Mr.  11.  T.  Ores-  Diaeoveries  in 
son  ;  and  the  existence  of  man  in  that  aila'Mlune^*' 
part  of  America  toward  the  close  of  the  ""*' 
Glacial  period  may  be  regarded  as  definitely  es- 
tablished. The  discoveries  of  Miss  Babbitt  and 
Professor  WincheU,  in  Minnesota,  carry  the  con- 
clusion still  farther,  and  add  to  the  probability  of 
the  existence  of  a  human  population  all  the  way 
from  the  Atlantic  coast  to  the  upper  Mississippi 
valley  at  that  remote  antiquity. 

A  still  more  remarkable  discovery  was  made  by 
Mr.  Cresson  in  July,  1887,  at  Claymont,  in  the 
north  of  Delaware.     In  a  deep  cut  of  the  Balti- 


_ 


10 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


i 


i  1^ 


fit' 


I 

If 
I 

m 


jDore  and  Oliio  Kailroad,  in  a  stratum  of  Phila- 
aiid  in  Delft-  delpliia  red  gravel  ami  brick  clay,  Mr. 
ware.  Crcsson  obtained  an  unquestionable  pa- 

laBolith,  and  a  few  months  afterward  his  diligent 
search  was  rewarded  with  another.^  This  forma- 
tion dates  from  far  back  in  the  Glacial  period. 
If  we  accept  Dr.  Croll's  method  of  reckoning,  we 
van  hardly  assign  to  it  an  antiquity  less  than 
150,000  years. 

^  The  chipped  implements  discovered  by  Messrs.  Abbott,  Metz, 
and  Cresson,  and  by  Miss  Babbitt,  ure  ull  on  exhibition  at  the 
Peabody  Museum  in  Cambridge,  whither  it  is  necessary  to  go  if 
one  would  get  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  relics  of  interglacial 
man  in  North  America.  The  collection  of  implements  made  by 
Dr.  Abbott  includes  much  more  than  the  paheoliths  already  re- 
ferred to.  It  is  one  of  the  most  important  collections  in  the 
world,  and  is  worth  a  long  journey  to  see.  Containing  more  than 
20,000  implements,  all  found  within  a  very  limited  area  in  New 
Jeraey,  ' '  as  now  arranged,  the  collection  exhibits  at  one  and  the 
same  time  the  sequence  of  peoples  and  phases  of  development  in 
the  valley  of  the  Delaware,  from  paleolithic  man,  through  the 
intermediate  period,  to  the  recent  Indians,  and  the  relative 
numerical  proportion  of  the  many  forms  of  their  implements, 
each  in  its  time.  ...  It  is  doubtful  whether  any  similar  collec- 
tion exists  from  which  a  student  can  gather  so  much  information 
at  sight  as  in  this,  where  the  natural  pebbles  from  the  gravel  be- 
gin the  series,  and  the  beautifully  chipped  points  of  chert,  jasper, 
and  quartz  terminate  it  in  one  direction,  and  the  polished  celts 
and  grooved  stone  axes  in  the  other. ' '  There  are  three  principal 
groups,  —  first,  the  interglacial  palseoliths,  secondly,  the  argillite 
points  and  flakes,  and  thirdly,  the  arrow-heads,  knives,  mortars 
and  pestles,  axes  and  hoes,  ornamental  stones,  etc,  of  Indians  of 
the  recent  period.  Dr.  Abbott's  Primitive  Industry,  published  in 
1881,  is  a  useful  manual  for  studying  this  collection  ;  and  an  ac- 
count of  his  discoveries  in  the  glacial  gravels  is  given  in  Reports 
of  the  Peabody  Museum,  vol.  ii.  pp.  30-48,  225-2.')8  ;  see  also  vol. 
iii.  p.  492.  A  succinct  and  judicious  account  of  the  whole  subject 
is  given  by  H.  W.  Haynes,  "  The  Prehistoric  Archfeology  of 
North  America,"  in  Winsor's  Narrative  and  Critical  History , 
vol.  i.  pp.  329-^68. 


I':;. 


^ 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


11 


But  accordinp^  to  Professor  Josiah  Whitney 
there  is  reason  for  Hui)j)osin{^  that  man  existed  in 
California  at  a  still  more  remote  period.  TheCaiavenu 
He  holds  that  the  famous  skull  dis-  *''""• 
covered  in  18G6,  in  the  gold-bearing  gravels  of 
Calaveras  county,  belongs  to  the  Pliocene  age.^ 
If  this  be  so,  it  seems  to  suggest  an  antiquity  not 
less  tliMa  twice  as  great  as  that  just  mentioned. 
The  que  lion  as  to  the  antiquity  of  the  Calaveras 
skull  is  Still  hotly  disputed  among  the  foremost 
palaeontologists,  but  as  one  reads  the  arguments 
one  cannot  help  feeling  that  theoretical  difficulties 
have  put  the  objectors  into  a  somewhat  inhospit- 
able attitude  toward  the  evidence  so  ably  pre- 
sented by  Professor  Whitney.  It  has  been  too 
hastily  assumed  that,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
evolution,  the  existence  of  Pliocene  man  is  im- 
probable. Upon  general  considerations,  however, 
we  have  strong  reason  for  believing  that  hiunan 
beings  must  have  inhabited  some  portions  of  the 
earth  throughout  the  whole  duration  of  the  Plio« 
cene  period,  and  it  need  not  surprise  us  if  their 
remains  are  presently  discovered  in  more  places 
than  one.2 

1  J.  D.  Whitney,  "The  Auriferous  Gravels  of  the  Sierra  No' 
vada,"  Memoirs  of  the  Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology  at  liar* 
vard  College,  Cambridge,  1880,  vol.  vi. 

'^  In  an  essay  published  in  1882  on  "  Europe  before  the  Arrival 
of  Man"  (Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,  pp.  1-40),  I  argued  that 
if  we  are  to  find  traces  of  the  "  missing  link,"  or  primordial 
stock  of  primates  from  which  man  has  been  derived,  we  must 
undoubtedly  look  for  it  in  the  Miocene  (p.  3G).  I  am  pleased 
at  finding  the  same  opinion  lately  expressed  by  one  of  the  highest 
living  authorities.  The  case  is  thus  stated  by  Alfred  Russel  Wal- 
lace '    "  The  evidence  we  now  possess  of  the  exact  nature  of  the 


12 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Whatever  may  be  the  final  outcome  of  the  Ca- 
laveras  controversy,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to 
the  existence  of  man  in  North  America  far  back 
in  early  Pleistocene  times.  The  men  of  the  Kiver- 
drift,  who  long  dwelt  in  western  Europe  during 

resemblance  of  man  to  the  various  species  of  anthropoid  apes, 
shows  us  that  he  has  little  special  affinity  for  any  one  rather  than 
another  species,  while  he  differs  from  them  all  in  several  impor- 
tant characters  in  which  they  agree  with  each  other.  The  con- 
clusion to  be  drawn  from  these  facts  is,  that  his  points  of  affinity 
connect  him  with  the  whole  group  while  his  special  peculiarities 
equally  separate  him  from  the  whole  group,  and  that  he  must, 
therefore,  have  diverged  from  the  common  ancestral  form  before 
the  existing  types  of  anthropoid  apes  had  diverged  from  each 
other.  Now  this  divergence  almost  certainly  took  place  as  early 
as  the  Miocene  period,  because  in  the  Upper  Miocene  deposits  of 
western  Europe  remains  of  two  species  of  ape  have  been  found 
allied  to  the  gibbons,  one  of  them,  dryopithecus,  nearly  as  large 
as  a  man,  and  believed  by  M.  Lartet  to  have  approached  man 
in  its  dentition  more  than  the  existing  apes.  We  seem  hardly, 
therefore,  to  have  reached  in  the  Upper  Miocene  the  epoch  of  the 
common  ancestor  of  man  and  the  anthropoids."  [Darwinism,  p. 
455,  London,  1889.)  Mr.  Wallace  goes  on  to  answer  the  objec- 
tion of  Professor  Boyd  Daw  kins,  "that  man  did  not  viobably 
exist  in  Pliocene  times,  because  almost  all  the  known  mammalia 
of  that  epoch  are  distinct  species  from  those  now  living  on  the 
earth,  and  that  the  same  changes  of  the  environment  which  led 
to  the  modification  of  other  mammalian  species  would  also  have 
led  to  a  change  in  man."  This  argument,  at  first  sight  apparently 
formidable,  quite  overlooks  the  fact  that  in  the  evolution  of  man 
there  came  a  point  after  which  variations  in  his  intelligence  were 
seized  upon  more  and  more  exclusively  by  natural  selection,  to 
the  comparative  neglect  of  physical  variations.  After  that  point 
man  changed  but  little  in  physical  characteri?tics,  except  in  size 
and  complexity  of  brain.  This  is  the  theorem  first  propounded 
by  Mr.  Wallace  in  the  Anthropological  Review,  May,  18(54 ;  re- 
stated in  his  Contributions  to  Natural  Selection,  chap,  ix.,  in  1870 ; 
and  further  extended  and  developed  by  me  in  connection  with  the 
theory  of  man's  origin  first  suggested  in  my  lectures  at  Harvaid 
in  1871,  and  worked  out  in  Cosmic  Philosophy,  part  ii.,  chauters 
zvi.,  xzi.,  xxii' 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


13 


the  milder  intervals  of  the  Glacial  period,  but 
seem  to  have  become  extinct  toward  the  end  of  it, 
are  well  known  to  palaeontologists  through  their 
bones  and  their  rude  tools.  Contemporaneously 
with  these  Europeans  of  the  River-drift  there  cer- 
tainly lived  some  kind  of  men,  of  a  similar  low 
grade  of  culture,  in  the  Mississippi  valley  and  on 
both  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  slopes  of 
North  America.  Along  with  these  an-  men  and  mam- 
cient  Americans  lived  some  terrestrial 
mammals  that  still  survive,  such  as  the  elk,  rein- 
deer, prairie  wolf,  bison,  musk-ox,  and  beaver; 
and  many  that  have  long  been  extinct,  such  as  the 
mylodon,  megatherium,  megalonyx,  mastodon,  Si- 
berian elephant,  mammoth,  at  least  six  or  seven 
species  of  ancestral  horse,  a  huge  bear  similar  to 
the  cave  bear  of  ancient  Europe,  a  lion  similar  to 
the  European  cave  lion,  and  a  tiger  as  large  as 
the  modern  tiger  of  Bengal. 

Now  while  the  general  relative  positions  of  those 
stupendous  abysses  that  hold  the  oceans  do  not 
aj)pear  to  have  undergone  any  considerable  change 
since  an  extremely  remote  geological  period,  their 
shallow  marginal  portions  ht,ve  been  repeatedly 
raised  so  as  to  add  extensive  territories  to  the  edges 
of  continents,  and  in  some  cases  to  convert  archi- 
pelagoes into  continents,  and  to  join  continents 
previously  separated.  Such  elevation  is  followed 
in  turn  by  an  era  of  subsidence,  and  almost  every, 
where  either  the  one  process  or  the  other  is  slowly 
going  on.  If  you  look  at  a  model  in  relief  of  the 
continents  and  ocean-floors,  such  as  may  be  seen  at 
the  Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology  m  Cambridge, 


;li. 


Ml 


14 


THE  DISCOVEBY  OF  AMERICA. 


showing  the  results  of  a  vast  number  of  soundings 
Elevation  and  ^^  ^^^  parts  of  the  world,  you  cannot  fail 
subsidence.       ^^   ^^  struck   with  the  shallowness  of 

Bering  Sea ;  it  looks  like  a  part  of  the  continent 
rather  than  of  the  ocean,  and  indeed  it  is  just  that, 
—  an  area  of  submerged  continent.  So  in  the 
northern  Atlantic  there  is  a  lofty  ridge  running 
from  France  to  Greenland.  The  British  islands, 
the  Orkney,  Shetland,  and  Fjeroe  groups,  and  Ice- 
land are  the  parts  of  this  ridge  high  enough  to  re- 
main out  of  water.  The  remainder  of  it  is  shallow 
sea.  Again  and  again  it  has  been  raised,  together 
with  the  floor  of  the  German  ocean,  so  as  to  be- 
come dry  land.  Both  before  and  since  the  time 
when  those  stone  tools  were  dropped  into  the  red 
gravel  from  which  Mr.  Cresson  took  them  the  other 
day,  the  northwestern  part  of  Europe  has  been 
solid  continent  for  more  than  a  hundred  miles  to 
the  west  of  the  French  and  Irish  coasts,  the  Thames 
and  Humber  have  been  tributaries  to  the  Rhine, 
which  emptied  into  the  Arctic  ocean,  and  ...cross 
the  Atlantic  ridge  one  might  have  walked  to  the 
New  World  dryshod.^  In  similar  wise  the  north- 
western corner  of  America  has  repeatedly  been 
joined  to  Siberia  through  the  elevation  of  Bering 
Sea. 

There  have  therefore  been  abundant  opportunities 
for  men  to  get  into  America  from  the  Old  World 
without  crossing  salt  water.  Probably  this  was 
the  case  with  the  ancient  inhabitants  of  the  Dela- 
ware and  Little  Miami  valleys ;  it  is   not  at  all 

^  See,  for  example,  the  map  of  Europe  in  early  potl-glacial 
times,  in  James  Geikie's  Prehistoric  Europe 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


15 


likely  that  men  who  used  their  kind  of  tools  knew 
much  about  going  on  the  sea  in  boats. 

Whether  the  Indians  are  descended  from  thia 
ancient  population  or  not,  is  a  question  with  which 
we  have  as  yet  no  satisfactory  method  of  dealing. 
It  is  not  unlikely  that  these  glacial  men  may  have 
perished  from  off  the  face  of  the  earth,  having  been 
crushed  and  supplanted  by  stronger  races.  There 
may  have  been  several  successive  waves  ^„„^g  ^f  mi- 
of  migration,  of  which  the  Indians  were  k'"**'*'"* 
the  latest.^  Tliere  is  time  enough  for  a  great 
many  things  to  happen  in  a  thousand  centuries. 
It  will  doubtless  be  long  before  all  the  evidence 
can  be  brought  in  and  ransacked,  but  of  one  thing 
we  may  feel  pretty  sure ;  the  past  is  more  full  of 
changes  than  we  are  apt  to  realize.  Our  first 
theories  are  usually  too  simple,  and  have  to  be  en- 
larged and  twisted  into  all  manner  of  shapes  in 
order  to  cover  the  actual  complication  of  facts.^ 

1  "  There  are  three  human  crania  in  the  Museum,  which  were 
found  in  the  gravel  at  Trenton,  one  several  feet  below  the  surface, 
the  others  near  the  surface.  These  skulls,  which  are  of  remark- 
able uniformity,  are  of  small  size  and  of  oval  shape,  differing  from 
all  other  skulls  in  the  Museum.  In  fact  they  are  of  a  distinct 
type,  and  hence  of  the  greatest  importance.  So  far  as  they  go 
they  indicate  that  paliBolithic  man  was  exterminated,  or  has  be- 
come lost  by  admixture  with  others  during  the  many  thousand 
yeai-s  which  have  passed  since  he  inhabited  the  Delaware  valley." 
i>\  W.  Putnam,  "  The  Peabody  Museum,"  Proceedings  of  the 
American  Antiquarian  Society,  1889,  New  Series,  vol.  vi.  p.  189. 

'•^  An  excellent  example  of  tliis  is  the  expansion  and  modifica- 
tion undergone  during  the  past  twenty  years  by  our  theories  of 
the  Aryan  settlement  of  Europe.    See  Benfey's  preface  to  Pick's 

Woerterbuch  der  Indoyermanischen  Grundsprache,  18l)8 ;  Geiger, 
Zur  Entwickelungsgeschichte  der  Menschheit,  1871 ,  Ciino,  For- 
tchungen  im  Gebiete  der  alien  Voelkerkunde,  1871 ;  Schmidt,  Die 

Verwandtschaftsverhdltnisse  der  Indogermanischen  Sprachen,  1872 ; 


l!i! 


11  16  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

In  this  connection  the  history  of  the  Eskimos 
introduces  us  to  some  interesting  problems.  Men- 
tion has  been  made  of  the  River-drift  men  who 
lived  in  Europe  during  the  milder  intervals  of  the 
Glacial  period.  At  such  times  they  made  their 
way  into  Germany  and  Britain,  along  with  leopards, 
hyaenas,  and  African  elephants.  But  as  the  cold 
intervals  came  on  and  the  edge  of  the  polar  ice- 
sheet  crept  southward  and  mountain  glaciers  filled 
up  the  valleys,  these  men  and  beasts  retreated 
into  Africa ;  and  their  place  was  taken  by  a  sub- 
The  Cave  men  ^rctic  racc  of  men  known  as  the  Cave 
the^GiS"*  men,  along  with  the  reindeer  and  arctic 
Period.  £qjj.  ^^^  musk-sheep.     More  than  once 

with  the  secular  alternations  of  temperature  did 
I't  the  River-drift  men  thus  advance  and  retreat  and 

I  '  advance  again,  and  as  they  advanced  the  Cave  men 

retreated,  both  races  yielding  to  an  enemy  stronger 
:  <  than   either,  —  to  wit,  the   hostile    climate.      At 

if  length  all  traces  of  the  River-drift  men  vanish, but 

what  of  the  Cave  men?    They  have  left  no  repre- 
sentatives among  the  present  populations  of  Europe, 
but  the  musk-sheep,  which  always  went  and  came 
f;  i  with  the  Cave  men,  is  to-day  found  only  in  sub- 

Poesche,  Die  Arter,  1878 ;  Lindenschniit,  Ilandbuch  der  deutschen 
Alterthumskunde,  1880;  Penka,  Or>gines  Ariacce,  1883,  and  Die 
Jterkunft  der  Arier,  188(1 ;  Spiegel,  Die  arische  Periode  und  ihre 
Znstand?,  1887;  Rendal,  Cradle  of  the  Aryans,  1889;  Schrader, 
Sprachvergleichung  und  Urgeschichte,  1888,  and  second  edition 
translated  into  English,  with  the  title  Prehistoric  Antiquities  of 
is  1  the  Aryan  Peoples,   1890.     ydirader's  is  an  epoch-making'  book. 

II  An  attempt  to  defend  the  older  and  simpler  views  is  made   by 
'j  ]  i                                          Max  Miiller,  Biographies  of  Words  and  the   Home  of  the  Aryas, 

\ !  1888 ;  see  also  Van  den  Gheyn,  L'origine  europeeune  des  Aryas, 

1889.     The   whole  case    is  well  summed  up   by  Isaac  Taylor, 
Origin  of  the  Aryans,  1889. 


■  I'l 

i  11  |i 


i  jty 

1  pi:; 

ill' 


u. 


.^.■-.  -  ....  -,.,.. .,..A-»^t 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  17 

arctic  America  among  the  Eskimos,  and  the  fos- 
silized bones  of  the  musk-sheep  lie  in  a  regular  trail 
across  the  eastern  hemisphere,  from  the  Pyrenees 
through  Germany  and  Russia  and  all  the  vast 
length  of  Siberia.  The  stone  arrow-heads,  the 
sewing-needles,  the  necklaces  and  amulets  of  cut 
teeth,  and  the  daggers  made  from  antler,  used  by 
the  Eskimos,  resemble  so  minutely  the  implements 
of  the  Cave  men,  that  if  recent  Eskimo  remains 
were  to  be  put  into  the  Pleistocene  caves  of  France 
and  England  they  would  be  indistinguishable  in 
appearance  from  the  remains  of  the  Cave  men 
which  are  now  found  tliere,^  There  is  another 
striking  point  of  resemblance.  The  Eskimos  have 
a  talent  for  artistic  sketching  of  men  and  beasts, 
and  scenes  in  which  men  and  beasts  figure,  which 
is  absolutely  unrivalled  among  rude  peoples.  One 
need  but  look  at  the  sketches  by  common  Eskimo 
fishermen  which  illustrate  Dr.  Henry  Rink's  fas- 
cinating book  on  Danish  Greenland,  to  realize  that 
this  rude  Eskimo  art  has  a  character  as  pronounced 
and  unmistakable  in  its  way  as  the  much  higher  art 
of  the  Japanese.  Now  among  the  European  remains 
of  the  Cave  men  are  many  skotches  of  mammoths, 
cave  bears,  and  other  animai.  now  extinct,  and 
hunting  scenes  so  artfidly  and  vividly  poi-trayed 
as  to  bring  distinctly  before  us  many  details  of 
daily  life  in  an  antiquity  so  vast  that  in  comparison 
with  it  the  interval  between  the  pyramids  jj,^  Eskimos 
of  Egypt  and  the  Eiffel  tov^er  shrinks  ^^emuSirf 
into  a  point.  Such  a  talent  i;'  unique  "'^cavemen. 
among  savage  peoples.  It  exists  only  among  the 
living   Eskimos  and  the  ancient  Cave  men;   and 

^  See  Dawkins,  Early  Man  m  Britain,  pp.  233-245. 


1  f 


18  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

when  considered  in  connection  with  so  many  other 
points  of  agi'eement,  and  with  the  indisputable  fact 
that  the  Cave  men  were  a  sub-arcti(;  race,  it  affords 
a  strong  presumption  in  favo  ir  of  the  opinion  of 
that  great  palaeontologist,  Professor  Boyd  Daw- 
kins,  that  the  Eskimos  of  North  i^merica  are  to- 
day the  sole  survivors  of  the  race  that  made  their 
homes  in  the  Pleistocene  caves  of  western  Europe.^ 

^  According  to  Dr.  Rink  the  Eskimos  formerly  inhabited  the 
central  portions  of  North  America,  and  have  retreated  or  been 
driven  northward;  he  would  make  the  Eskimos  of  Siberia  an 
offshoot  from  those  of  America,  though  he  freely  admits  that 
there  are  grounds  for  entertaining  tlie  opposite  view.  Dr.  Abbott 
is  inclined  to  attribute  au  Eskimo  origin  to  some  of  the  palaeo- 
liths  of  the  Trenton  gravel.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Clements 
Markham  derives  the  American  Eskimos  from  those  of  Siberia. 
It  seems  to  me  that  these  views  may  be  comprehended  and 
reconciled  in  a  wider  one.  I  would  suggest  that  during  the 
Glacial  period  the  ancestral  Eskimos  may  have  gradually  be- 
come adapted  to  arctic  conditions  of  life  ;  that  in  the  mild  inter- 
glacial  intervals  they  migrated  northward  along  with  the  nmsk- 
sheep ;  and  that  upon  the  return  of  the  cold  they  migrated  south- 
ward again,  keeping  always  near  the  edge  of  the  ice-sheet. 
Such  a  southward  migration  would  naturally  enough  bring  them 
in  one  continent  down  to  the  Pyrenees,  in  the  other  down  to  the 
AUeghanies ;  and  naturally  enough  the  modern  inquirer  has  his 
attention  first  directed  to  the  indications  of  their  final  retreat, 
both  northward  in  America  and  northeastward  from  Europe 
through  Siberia.  Tliis  is  like  what  happened  with  so  many 
plants  and  animals.  Compare  Darwin's  remarks  on  "  Dispersal 
in  the  Glacial  Period,"  Origin  of  Species,  chap.  xii. 

The  best  books  on  the  Eskimos  are  those  of  Dr.  Rink,  Tales 
and  Traditions  of  the  Eskimo,  Edinburgh,  1875 ;  Danish  Greenland, 
London,  1877  ;  The  Eskimo  Tribes,  their  Distribution  and  Charac- 
teristics, especially  in  regard  to  Language,  Copenhagen,  1887.  See 
also  Franz  Boas,  "The  Central  Eskimo,"  Sixth  Report  of  the 
''bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washington,  1888,  pp.  399-C69  ;  W.  H.  Dall, 
Alaska  and  its  Resources,  1870;  Markham,  "Origin  and  Migra- 
tions of  the  Greenland  Esquimaux,"  Journal  of  the  Royal  GeO' 
graphical  Society,  1865 ;  Cranz,  Historie  von   Groenlandy  Leipsio, 


^ 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


19 


II'  we  have  always  been  accustomed  to  think  of 
races  of  men  only  as  they  are  placed  on  modern 
maps,  it  at  first  seems  strange  to  think  of  England 
and  France  as  ever  having  been  inhabited  by  Es- 
kimos. Facts  equally  strange  may  be  cited  in 
abundance  from  zoology  and  botany.  Tlie  camel 
is  found  to-day  only  in  Arabia  and  Bactria ;  yet 
in  alii  probability  the  camel  originated  in  Amer- 
ica,^ and  is  an  intruder  into  what  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  call  his  native  deserts,  just  as  the  people 
of  the  United  States  are  European  intruders  upon 
the  soil  of  America.  So  the  giant  trees  of  Mari- 
posa grove  are  now  found  only  in  California,  but 
there  was  once  a  time  when  they  were  as  common 
in  E iirope  ^  as  maple-trees  to-day  in  a  New  Eng- 
land  villaf^e. 

Fainiliarity  with  innumerable  facts  of  this  sort, 
concerning  the  complicated  migrations  and  distri- 
bution of  plants  and  animals,  lias  entirely  altered 
our  way  of  looking  at  the  question  as  to  the  origin 
of  the  American  Indians.  As  already  observed, 
we  can  hardly  be  said  to  possess  sufficient  data  for 
determining  whether  they  are  descended  from  the 
Pleistocene  inhabitants  of  America,  or  have  come 
in  some  later  wave  of  migration  from  the  Old 
World.      Nor  can  we  as  yet  determine  whether 

1705  ;  Petitot,  Traditions  indiennes  du  Canada  nord-ouest,  Paris, 
1886  ;  Filling's  Bibliography  of  the  Eskimo  Language,  Washinj^ton, 
1887 ;  W^ells  and  Kelly,  English-Eskimo  and  Eskimo-  English  Vo- 
cabularies, with  Ethnographical  Memoranda  concerning  the  Arctic 
Eskimos  in  Alaska  and  (S('fier/a,  W.isliington,  1890;  Carstcnsen'a 
Two  Summers  in  Greenland,  London,  1890. 

^  Wallace,  Geographical  Distribution  of  Animals,  vol.  ii.  p.  155. 

^  Asa  Gray,  *'  Sequoia  and  its  History,"  in  his  Darvoiniana^ 
pp.  203-235. 


20 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


i!ll 


;  ' 


tliey  were  earlier  or  later  comers  than  the  Eskimos. 
But  since  we  have  got  rid  of  that  feeling  of  specu- 
lative necessity  above  referred  to,  for  bringing  the 
red  men  from  Asia  within  the  historic  period,  it  has 
become  more  and  more  clear  that  they  have  dwelt 
upon  American  soil  for  a  very  long  time.  The 
aboriginal  American,  as  we  know  him,  with  his 
language  and  legends,  his  physical  and  mental 
peculiarities,  his  social  observances  and  customs,  is 
most  emphatically  a  native  and  not  an  imported 
article.  He  belongs  to  the  American  continent  as 
strictly  as  its  opossums  and  armadillos,  its  maize 
and  its  golden-rod,  or  any  members  of  its  aborigi- 
nal fauna  and  flora  belong  to  it.  In  all 
probability  he  came  from  the  Old  World 
at  some  ancient  period,  whether  pre- 
glacial  or  post-glacial,  when  it  was  pos- 
sible to  come  by  land ;  and  here  in  all 
probability,  until  the  arrival  of  white  men  from 
Europe,  he  remained  undisturbed  by  later  comers, 
unless  the  Eskimos  may  have  been  such.  There  is 
not  a  particle  of  evidence  to  suggest  any  connection 
or  intercourse  between  aboriginal  America  and 
Asia  within  any  such  period  as  the  last  twenty 
thousand  years,  except  in  so  far  as  there  may  per- 
haps now  and  then  have  been  slight  surges  of 
Eskimo  tribes  back  and  forth  across  Bering  strait. 
The  Indians  must  surely  be  regarded  as  an  en- 
tirely different  stock  from  the  Eskimos.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  most  competent  American  ethnol- 
ogists are  now  pretty  thoroughly  agreed  that  all 
the  aborigines  south  of  the  Eskimo  legion,  all  the 
way  from  Hudson's   Bay  to   Cape  Horn,  belong 


There  was 
probably  no 
connection  or 
intercourse  by 
water  between 
nncient  Amer- 
ica and  the 
Old  World. 


'II 
i-i'i' 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


21 


to  one  and  the  same  race.  It  was  formerly  sup- 
posed that  the  higher  culture  of  the  Aztecs,  Mayas, 
and  Peruvians  must  indicate  that  they  were  of 
different  race  from  the  more  barbarous  Algonqnins 
and  Dakotas  ;  and  a  sijeciUative  necessity  was  felt 
for  proving  that,  whatever  may  have  been  the  case 
with  the  other  American  peoples,  this  ^here  is  one 
higher  culture  at  any  rate  must  have  cau"*  reT''' 
been  introduced  within  the  historic  '**^^* 
period  from  the  Old  World.^  This  feeling  was 
caused  partly  by  the  fact  that,  owing  to  crude 
and  loosely-framed  conceptions  of  the  real  points 
of  difference  between  civilization  and  barbarism, 
this  Central  American  culture  was  absurdly  exag- 
gerated. As  the  further  study  of  the  uncivilized 
parts  of  the  world  has  led  to  more  accurate  and 
precise  conceptions,  this  kind  of  speculative  neces- 
sity has  ceased  to  be  felt.  There  is  an  increasing 
disposition  among  scholars  to  agree  that  the  war- 
rior of  Anahuac  and  the  shepherd  of  the  Andes 
were  just  simply  Indians,  and  that  their  culture 
was  no  less  indigenous  than  that  of  the  Cherokees 
or  Mohawks. 

To  prevent  any  possible  misconception  of  my 
meaning,  a  further  word  of  explanation  may  be 
needed  at  this  point.    The  word  "  race  " 

.  .    ,  Different 

is  used  in  such  widely  different  senses  senses  in  which 

.  ''  the  word 

that  there  IS  apt   to   be   more  or   less  "race "is 

,  ,      used. 

vagueness  about  it.     The  difference  is 

^  Illustrations  may  be  found  in  plenty  in  the  learned  works  of 
Brasseur  de  Bonrbourg' :  —  Ilistoire  ilea  nations  civilis^es  du  Mexi'/ue 
et  de  V xhntrique  centrale,  4  vols.,  Paris,  l.Sr)7-58 ;  Popol  I'uA, 
Paris,  lH(jl  ;  Quatre  lettres  sur  le  Mexique,  Paris,  180S;  Le  muau^ 
scrit  Troano,  Paris,  1870,  etc 


22 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


¥  I 


mainly  in  what  logicians  call  extension  ;  some- 
times the  word  covers  very  little  ground,  some- 
times a  great  tieal.  We  say  that  the  ])eople  of  Eng- 
land, of  the  United  States,  and  of  New  South 
Wales  belong  to  one  and  the  same  race  ;  and  we 
say  that  an  Englishman,  a  Frenchman,  and  a 
Greek  belong  to  three  different  races.  There  is 
a  sense  in  which  both  these  statements  are  true. 
But  there  is  also  a  sense  in  which  we  may  say 
that  the  En<>lishman,  the  Frenchman,  and  the 
Greek  belong  to  one  and  the  same  race  ;  and  that 
is  when  we  are  contrasting  them  as  white  men 
with  black  men  or  yellow  men.  Now  we  may 
correctly  say  that  a  Sha^vnee,  an  Ojibwa,  and  a 
Kickapoo  belong  to  one  and  the  same  Algonquin 
race  ;  that  a  Mohawk  and  a  Tuscarora  belong  to 
one  and  the  same  Iroquois  race  ;  but  that  an  Al- 
gonquin differs  from  an  Iroquois  somewhat  as  an 
Englishman  differs  from  a  Frenchman.  No  doubt 
we  may  fairly  say  that  the  Mexicans  encountered 
by  Cortes  differed  in  race  from  the  Iroquois  en- 
countered by  Champlain,  as  much  as  an  English- 
man differs  from  an  Albanian  or  a  Montenegrin. 
But  when  we  are  contrasting  aboriginal  Anieri- 
aUS  with  white  men  or  yellow  men,  it  is  right  to 
say  that  Mexicans  and  Iroquois  belong  to  the 
same  great  red  race. 

In  some  parts  of  the  world  two  strongly  con- 
trasted races  have  become  mingled  together,  or 
have  existed  side  by  side  for  centuries  without  in- 
termingling. In  Europe  the  big  blonde  Aiyan- 
speaking  race  has  mixed  with  the  small  brunette 
Iberian   race,  producing  the  endless  varieties  in 


Pi' 


fciMM      I        ■  t.^-^^'-'^i'" 


Hitfk^aaMrfH 


TW 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


23 


stature  and  complexion  which  may  he  seen  in  any 
drawino-room  in  London  or  New  York.  In  Africa 
south  of  Sahara,  on  the  other  hand,  we  find,  inter- 
spersed among  negro  trihes  hut  kept  perfectly  dis- 
tinct, that  primitive  dwarfish  race  with  yellow  skin 
and  tufted  hair  to  which  helong  the  Hottentots  and 
Bushmen,  the  Wamhatti  lately  discovered  by  Mr. 
Stanley,  and  other  tribes.^  Now  in  America  south 
of  Hudson's  Bay  the  case  seems  to  have  been  quite 
otherwise,  and  more  as  it  would  have  been  in  Eu- 
rope if  there  had  been  only  Aryans,  or  in  Africa 
if  there  had  been  only  blacks.^ 

The  belief  that  the  people  of  the  Cordilleras 
must  be  of  radically  different  race  from  other 
Indians  was  based  upon  the  vague  notion  that 
grades  of  culture  have  some  necessary  connection 
with  likenesses  and  differences  of  race. 
There  is  no  such  necessary  connection.^ 
Between  the  highly  civilized  Japanese 
and  their  barbarous  Mandshu  cousins 
the  difference  in  culture  is  much  greater 


No  necessary 
coniiectioii  be- 
tween differ- 
pneeB  in 
culture  and 
difference's 
in  race. 


^  See  Werner,  "The  African  Pygmies,"  Popular  Science 
Monthly,  September,  1890,  —  a  thoughtful  and  interesting  article. 

2  This  sort  of  illustration  requires  continual  limitation  and 
qualification.  The  ca.se  in  ancient  America  w.as  not  quite  as  it 
would  have  been  in  Europe  if  there  had  been  only  Aryans  there. 
The  semi-civilized  people  of  the  Cordilleras  were  relatively  bra- 
chycephalous  as  compared  with  the  more  barbarous  Indians  north 
and  east  of  New  Mexico.  It  is  correct  to  call  this  a  distinction 
of  race  if  we  mean  thereby  a  distinction  de;^eloped  upon  Ameri- 
can soil,  a  differentiation  within  the  limits  of  the  red  race,  and 
not  an  intrusion  from  without.  In  this  sense  the  Caribs  also  may 
be  regarded  as  a  distil  sub-race ;  and,  in  the  same  sense,  we 
may  call  the  Kafirs  a  aistinct  sub-race  of  African  blacks.  See, 
as  to  the  latter,  Tylor,  Anthropology,  p.  G9. 

^  As  Sir  John  Lubbock  well  says,  "  Different  races  in  similar 


24  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

than  the  difference  between  Mohawks  and  Mex- 
icans ;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  people 
of  Israel  and  Judah  in  contrast  witli  the  Arabs 
of  the  desert,  or  of  the  inijjcrial  lloinans  in  com- 
parison with  their  Teutonic  kinsmen  as  described 
by  Tacitus. 

At  this  point,  in  order  to  prepare  ourselves  the 
more  clearly  to  understand  sundry  facts  with 
which  we  shall  hereafter  be  obliged  to  deal,  espe- 
cially the  wonderfid  experiences  of  the  Spanish  con- 
querors, it  will  be  well  to  pause  for  a  moment  and 
do  something  toward  defining  the  different  grades 
Grades  of  oui-  of  culturc  througli  wliicli  men  hav; 
*'""*■  passed  in  attaining  to  the  grade  wliicli 

can  properly  be  called  civilization.  Unless  we 
begin  with  clear  ideas  upon  this  head  we  cannot 
go  far  toward  understanding  the  ancient  America 
that  was  first  visited  and  described  for  us  by 
Spaniards.  The  various  grades  of  culture  need 
to  be  classified,  and  that  most  original  and  sugges- 
tive scholar,  the  late  Lewis  Morgan  of  liochester, 
made  a  brilliant  attempt  i;i  this  direction,  to  which 
the  reader's  attention  is  now  invited. 

Below  Civilization  Mr.  Morgan  ^  distinguishes 
two  principal  grades  or  stages  of  culture,  namely 
Savagery  and  Barhnrism.  There  is  much  loose- 
ness and  confusion  in  the  popidar  use  of  these 

stages  of  development  often  present  more  features  of  resemblance 
to  one  another  than  the  same  race  does  to  itself  in  different  stages 
Qf  its  history."  {Origin  of  Civilization,  p.  11.)  If  every  student  of 
history  and  ethnology  would  begin  by  learning  this  lesson,  the 
World  would  be  spared  a  vast  amount  of  unprofitable  theorizing. 
^  See  his  great  work  on  Ancient  Society,  New  York,  1877. 


W;, 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


25 


terms,  and  this  is  liable  to  l)c(!ome  a  fruitful 
sourc'o  of  niiHapprchenHion  in  the  case  of  any 
statement  invo^vinj^  either  of  them.  When  popu- 
lar usage  discriminates  between  tliem  Digtiiutionb*. 
it  discriminates  in  the  riglit  direction  ;  iy,!^y  iJ.a'" 
there  is  a  vague  but  not  uncertain  feel-  "'"■'^'"■"'"»' 
ing  that  savagery  is  a  lower  stage  than  barbarism. 
But  ordinarily  the  discrimination  is  not  niach;  and 
the  two  terms  are  carelessly  em})l()yed  as  if  inter- 
changeable. Scientific  writers  long  since  recog- 
nized a  general  difference  between  savagery  and 
barbarism,  but  Mr.  Morgan  was  the  first  to  sug- 
gest a  really  useful  criterion  for  distinguishing 
between  them.  His  criterion  is  the  making  of 
pottery ;  and  his  reason  for  selecting  it  is  that  the 
making  of  pottery  is  something  tliat  ])resupposes 
village  life  and  more  or  less  progress  in  the  sinipler 
arts.  The  earlier  methods  of  boiling  food  were 
either  putting  it  into  holes  in  the  ground  lined 
with  skins  and  then  using  heated  stones,  or  else 
putting  it  into  baskets  coated  with  clay  oriRinof  pot- 
to  be  supported  over  a  fire.  The  clay  ^^^^' 
served  the  double  purpose  of  preventing  liquids 
from  escaping  and  protecting  the  basket  against 
the  flame.  It  was  j^robably  observed  that  the  clay 
was  hardened  by  the  fire,  and  thus  in  course  of 
time  it  was  found  that  the  clay  v/ould  answer  the 
purpose  without  the  basket.^  Whoever  first  made 
this  ingenious  discovery  led  the  way  from  sav- 
agery to  barbarism.    Throughout  the  present  work 

^  See  the  evidence  in  Tylor,  Researches  into  the  Early  History 
of  Mankind,  pp.  209-272;  cf.  Lubbock,  PreAistorjc  T/mes,  p.  573 ; 
and  see  Cushing's  masterly  ' '  Study  of  Pueblo  Pottery,"  etCf 
Reports  of  Bureau,  of  Ethnology,  iv.,  473-521. 


I 


TT 


26  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

we  shall  apply  the  name  "savages"  only  to  un- 
civilized people  who  do  not  make  pottery. 

But  within  each  of  these  two  stages  Mr.  Mor- 
gan distinguishes  three  subordinate  stages,  or 
Ethnic  Periods,  which  may  be  called  either  lower, 
middle,  and  upper  status,  or  older,  middle,  and 
later  periods.  The  lower  status  of  savagery  was 
Lower  status  ^l^^t  wholly  prehistoric  stage  when  men 
of  savagery.  Jiycd  iu  their  Original  restricted  habitat 
and  subsisted  on  fruit  ard  nuts.  To  this  period 
must  be  assigned  the  beginning  of  articulate 
speech.  All  existing  rac^es  of  men  had  passed  be- 
yond it  at  an  unknown  antiquity. 

Men  began  to  pass  beyond  it  when  they  dis- 
covered how  to  catch  fish  and  how  to  use  fire. 
They  could  then  begin  (following  coasts  and 
Middle  status  rivcrs)  to  Spread  over  the  earth.  The 
of  savagery.  n^iJJle  status  of  savagciy,  thus  intro- 
duced, ends  with  the  irvention  of  that  compound 
weapon,  the  bow  and  arrow.  The  natives  of  Aus- 
tralia, who  do  not  know  this  weapon,  are  still  in 
the  middle  status  of  savagery.^ 

The  invention  of  the  bow  and  arrow,  which 
marks  the  upper  status  of  savagery,  was  not  only 
a  great  advance  in  military  art,  but  it  also  vastly 
Upper  status  iucreascd  men's  supply  of  food  by  in- 
of  savagery,  creasing  their  power  of  killing  wild 
game.  The  lowest  tribes  in  America,  such  as 
those  upon  the  Columbia  river,  the  Athabaskans 
of  Hudson's  Bay,  the  Fuegians  and  some  other 
South  American  tribes,  are  in  the  upper  status  of 
savagery. 

^  Luniholtz,  Among  Cannibals,  London,  1889,  gives  arivid  pi* 
ture  of  aboriginal  life  in  Australia. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


27 


The  transition  from  this  status  to  the  lower 
status  of  barbarism  was  marked,  as  before 
observed,  by  the  invention  of  pottery.  The  end 
of  the  lower  status  of  barbarism  was  marked  in 
the  Old  World  by  the  domestication  of  animals 
ether  than  the  dog,  which  was  probably  domesti- 
cated at  a  much  earlier  period  as  an  aid  to  the 
hunter.  The  domestication  of  horses  and  asses, 
oxen  and  sheep,  goats  and  pigs,  marks  Lower  status 
of  course  an  immense  advance.  Along  He^ndedTi^' 
with  it  goes  considerable  development  two'heml"*^ 
of  agriculture,  thus  enabling  a  small  '«p'"^'^^»- 
territory  to  support  many  people  It  takes  a 
wide  range  of  country  to  support  hunters.  In 
the  New  World,  except  in  Peru,  the  only  do- 
mesticated animal  was  the  dog.  Horses,  oxen, 
and  the  other  animals  mentioned  did  not  exist  in 
America,  during  the  historic  period,  until  they 
were  brought  over  from  Europe  by  the  Spaniards. 
In  ancient  American  society  there  was  no  such 
thing  as  a  pastoral  stage  of  development,^  and  the 
absence  of  domesticable  animals  from  the  western 
hemisphere  may  well  be  reckoned  as  very  impor- 
tant among  the  causes  which  retarded  the  pro- 
gress of  mankind  in  this  part  of  the  world. 

On  the  other  hand  the  ancient  Americans  had 
a  cereal  plant  peculiar  to  tlie  New  World,  which 
made  comparatively  small  demands  upon  the  in- 
telligence and  industry  of  the  cultivator.  Maize 
or  "  Indian  corn  "  has  played  a  most  important 

1  The  case  of  Peru,  which  forms  an  api^arent  but  not  real  ex- 
ception to  tliis  general  statement,  will  be  considered  below  in 
chap.  ix. 


28 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


m 


ilii; 

ill . 


part  in  the  history  of  the  New  World,  as  regards 
both  the  red  men  and  the  white  men.  It  could 
be  planted  without  clearing  or  ploughing  the  soil. 
It  was  only  necessary  to  girdle  the  trees  with  a 
stone  hatchet,  so  as  to  destroy  their  leaves  and  let 
in  the  sunshine.  A  few  scratches  and  digs  were 
made  in  the  ground  with  a  stone  digger,  and  the 
seed  once  dropped  in  took  care  of  itself.  The  ears 
Importance  of  could  hang   for  wccks   after  ripening, 

Indian  corn.        ^j^j    ^.q^J^J    ^^    picked    off  witllOUt    lUcd- 

dling  with  the  stalk ;  there  was  no  need  of  thresh- 
ing and  winnowing.  None  of  the  Old  World  ce- 
reals can  be  cidtivated  without  much  more  industry 
and  intelligence.  At  the  same  time,  when  Indian 
corn  is  sown  in  tilled  land  it  yields  with  little  la- 
bour more  than  twice  as  much  food  per  acre  as  any 
other  kind  of  grain.  This  was  of  incalculable  ad- 
vantage to  the  English  settlers  of  New  Enghmd, 
who  would  have  found  it  much  harder  to  gain  a 
secure  foothold  upon  the  soil  it  they  had  had  to 
begin  by  preparing  it  for  wheat  and  rye  without 
the  aid  of  the  beautiful  and  beneficent  American 
plant.^  The  Indians  of  the  Atlantic  coast  of 
North  America  for  the  most  part  lived  in  stock- 
aded villages,  and  cultivated  their  corn  along  with 
beans,  jiumpkins,  squashes,  and  tobacco ;  but  their 
cultivation  was  of  the  rudest  sort,^  and  poj)ulation 
was  too  sparse  for  much  progress  toward  civiliza- 

^  See  Shaler,  "  Physiograivhy  of  North  America,"  in  Winsor's 
Nan:  and  Crit.  Hist.  vol.  iv.  p.  xiii. 

'  "  No  manure  was  used,"  says  Mr.  Parkman,  speaking'  of  the 
Hurons,  "  but  at  intervals  of  from  ten  to  twenty  years,  wJien  the 
soil  was  exhausted  and  firewood  distant,  the  village  was  aban- 
doned and  a  new  one  built."     Jesuits  in  North  America,  p.  xxz* 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


29 


tion.  But  Indian  corn,  when  sown  in  carefully 
tilled  and  irrigated  land,  had  much  to  do  with 
the  denser  population,  the  increasing  organization 
of  labour,  and  the  higher  development  in  the  aiis, 
which  characterized  the  confederacies  of  Mexico 
and  Central  America  and  all  the  pueblo  Indians 
of  the  southwest.  The  potato  jjlayed  a  somewhat 
similar  part  in  Peru.  Hence  it  seems  proper  to 
take  the  regular  employment  of  tiUage  with  irri- 
gation as  marking  the  end  of  the  lower  period  of 
barbarism  in  the  New  World.  To  this  Mr.  Mor- 
gan adds  the  use  of  adobe-brick  and  stone  in  ar- 
chitecture, which  also  distinguished  the  Mexicans 
and  their  neighbours  from  the  ruder  tribes  of 
North  and  South  America.  All  these  ruder  tribes, 
except  the  few  already  mentioned  as  in  the  upper 
period  of  savagery,  were  somewhere  within  the 
lower  period  of  barbarism.  Thus  the  Algonquins 
and  Iroquois,  the  Creeks,  the  Dakotas,  etc.,  when 
first  seen  by  white  men,  were  within  this  period ; 
but  some  had  made  much  further  progress  within 
it  than  others.  For  example,  the  Algonquin  tribe 
of  O  jib  was  had  little  more  than  emerged  from  sav- 
agery, while  the  Creeks  and  Cherokees  had  made 
considerable  advance  toward  the  middle  status  of 
barbarism. 

Let  us  now  observe  some  characteristics  of  this 
extremely  interesting  middle  period.  It  began, 
we  see,  in  the  eastern  hemisphere  with  kiddie  statiw 
the  domestication  of  other  animals  than  °*  barbarism. 
the  dog,  and  in  the  western  hemisphere  with  cidti- 
vation  by  irrigation  and  the  use  of  adobe-brick 
and  stone  for  building.     It  also  possessed  anothe? 


f 


II 


30  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

feature  which  distinguished  it  from  earlier  pe- 
riods, in  the  materials  of  which  its  tools  were 
made.  In  the  periods  of  savagery  hatchets  and 
Bpear-heads  were  made  of  rudely  chipped  stones. 
In  the  lower  period  of  barbarism  the  chipping  be- 
came more  and  more  skilful  until  it  gave  place  to 
polishing.  In  the  middle  period  tools  were  greatly 
multiplied,  improved  polishing  gave  sharp  and 
accurate  points  and  edges,  and  at  last  metals  b© 
gan  to  be  used  as  materials  preferable  to  stonQ 
In  America  the  metal  used  was  copper,  and  in 
some  spots  where  it  was  very  accessible  there  were 
instances  of  its  use  by  tribes  not  in  other  respects 
above  the  lower  status  of  barbarism,  —  as  for  ex- 
ample, the  "  mooind-builders."  In  the  Old  World 
the  metal  used  was  the  alloy  of  copper  and  tin 
familiarly  known  as  bronze,  and  in  its  working  it 
called  for  a  higher  d(igree  of  intelligence  than 
copper. 

Toward  the  close  of  the  middle  period  of  bar- 
barism the  working  of  metals  became  the  most  im- 
portant element  of  progress,  and  the  period  may  be 
Working  of  regarded  as  ending  with  the  invention 
metaiB.  q£   ^j^g   proccss    of   Smelting   iron  ore. 

According  to  this  principle  of  division,  the  in- 
habitants of  the  lake  villages  of  ancient  Switzer- 
land, who  kept  horses  and  oxen,  pigs  and  sheep, 
raised  wheat  and  ground  it  into  flour,  and  spun 
and  wove  linen  garments,  but  knew  nothing  of 
iron,  were  in  tho  middle  status  of  barbarism.  The 
same  was  true  of  the  ancient  Britons  before  they 
learned  the  use  of  iron  from  their  neighbours  in 
Gaid.     In  the  New  World  the  representatives  of 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


81 


the  middle  status  of  barbarism  were  such  peoples 
as  the  Zuiiis,  the  Aztecs,  the  Mayas,  and  the  Peru- 
vians. 

The  upper  status  of  barbarism,  in  so  far  as  it 
implies  a  knowledge  of  smelting  iron,  was  never 
reached  in  aboriginal  America.    In  the  Old  World 
it  is  the  stage  which  had  been  reached  ^pper  status 
by  the  Greeks  of  the  Homeric  poems  ^  "^  barbarism. 
and  the  Germans  in  the  time  of  Caesar.     The  en(f 

^  In  the  mteresting  architectural  remains  unearthed  by  Dr. 
Schliemann  at  Mycenae  and  Tiryns,  there  have  been  found  at  the 
former  place  a  few  iron  keys  and  knives,  at  the  latter  one  iron 
lance-head ;  but  the  form  and  workmanship  of  these  objects 
mark  them  as  not  older  than  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century 
B.  c,  or  the  time  of  the  Persian  wars.  With  these  exceptions 
the  weapons  and  tools  found  in  these  cities,  as  also  in  Troy,  were 
of  bronze  and  stone.  Bronze  was  in  common  use,  but  obsidian 
knives  and  arrow-heads  of  fine  workmanship  abound  in  the  ruins. 
According  to  Professor  Sayce,  these  ruins  must  date  frona  2000 
to  1700  B.  c.  The  Greeks  of  that  time  would  accordingly  be 
placed  in  the  middle  status  of  barbarism.  (See  Schliemann's 
MycencE,  pp.  75,  364;  Tiryns,  p.  171.)  In  the  state  of  society 
described  in  the  Homeric  poems  the  smelting  of  iron  was  well 
known,  but  the  process  seems  to  have  been  costly,  so  that  bronze 
jeeapons  were  still  commonly  used.  (Tylor,  Anthropology,  p. 
270.)  The  Romans  of  the  regal  period  were  ignorant  of  iron. 
(Lanciani,  Ancient  Borne  in  the  Light  of  Eecent  Discoveries,  Bos- 
ton, 1888,  pp.  39-48.)  The  upper  period  of  barbarism  was 
shortened  for  Greece  and  Rome  through  the  circumstance  that 
they  learned  the  working  of  iron  from  Egypt  and  the  use  of  the 
alphabet  from  Phoenicia.  Such  copying,  of  course,  affects  the 
symmetry  of  such  schemes  as  Mr.  Morgan's,  and  allowances  have 
to  be  made  for  it.  It  is  curious  that  both  Greeks  and  Romans 
seem  to  have  preserved  some  tradition  of  the  Bronze  Age :  '— 

TOis  5'  ^i'  x<«^f  e*  /nf«'  Ttvxta,  x<iAf  eot  S4  re  oIkoi, 
;(aAjc((>  6'  eipyd^oi/TO  '  /uieAas  &'  ovK  i<rKt  iriSripot. 

Hesiod,  0pp.  Di.  ISl. 

Anna  aiitiqiia  maniin  ungues  dentesque  fueruut 
^t  lapides  et  item  silvarum  fragmiua  rami, 


I 


i 


32  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMEBIC  A. 

of  this  period  and  the  beginning  of  true  civiliza» 
tion  is  marked  by  the  invention  of  a  phonetic 
alphabet  and  the  production  of  written  records. 
This  brings  within  the  pale  of  civilization  such 
people  as  the  ancient  Phoenicians,  the  Hebrews 
BfiRinniiiKof  ^ftor  the  exodus,  the  ruling  classes  at 
civilization.  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  the  Aryans  of 
Persia  and  India,  and  the  Japanese.  But  clearly 
it  will  not  do  to  insist  too  narrowly  upon  the  pho- 
netic character  of  the  alphabet.  Where  people 
acquainted  with  iron  have  enshrined  in  hieroglyph- 
ics so  much  matter  of  historic  record  and  literary 
interest  as  the  Chinese  and  the  ancient  Egyptians, 
tliey  too  must  be  classed  as  civilized ;  and  this  Mr. 
Morgan  by  implication  admits. 

This  brilliant  classification  of  the  stages  of  early 
cidture  will  be  found  very  helpful  if  we  only  keep 
in  mind  the  fact  that  in  all  wide  generalizations 
of  this  sort  the  case  is  liable  to  be  somewhat  un- 
duly simplified.  The  story  of  human  progress  is 
really  not  quite  so  easy  to  decipher  as  such  de- 
scriptions would  make  it  appear,  and  when  we 
have  laid  down  rules  of  this  sort  we  need  not  be 
surprised  if  we  now  and  then  con  e  upon  facts 
that  will  not  exactly  fit  into  them.     In  such  an 

Et  flamma  atque  ignes,  postquam  sunt  cognita  primum. 

Posterius  ferri  vis  est,  aerisque  reperta. 

St  prior  leris  erat,  quam  ferri  coguitua  usus,  etc. 

Lucretius,  ▼.  1283. 

Perhaps,  as  Munro  sugg'estg,  Lucretius  was  thinking  of  Ilesiod  ; 
but  it  does  not  seem  improbable  that  in  both  cases  there  may 
have  been  <a  genuine  tradition  that  their  ancestore  used  bronze 
tools  and  weapons  before  iron,  since  the  change  was  comparatively 
recent,  and  sundry  religio'os  observancea  tended  to  perpetuate  the 
memory  of  it. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


33 


event  it  is  best  not  to  try  to  squeeze  or  distort  the 
unruly  facts,  but  to  look  and  see  if  our  rules  will 
not  bear  some  little  qualification.  The  faculty 
for  generalizing  is  a  good  servant  but  a  bad  mas- 
ter. If  we  observe  this  caution  we  shall  find  Mr. 
Morgan's  work  to  be  of  great  value.  It  will  be 
observed  that,  with  one  exception,  his  restrictions 
leave  the  area  of  civilization  as  wide  as  that  which 
we  are  accustomed  to  assign  to  it  in  our  ordinary 
speaking  and  thinking.  That  exception  is  the  case 
of  Mexico,  Central  America,  and  Pern.  We  have 
so  long  been  accustomed  to  gorgeous  accounts  of 
the  civilization  of  these  countries  at  the  time  of 
their  discovery  b^  the  Spaniards  that  it  may  at 
fii'st  shock  our  preconceived  notions  to  see  them 
set  down  as  in  the  "  middle  status  of  barbarism," 
one  stage  higher  than  Mohawks,  and  one  stage 
lower  than  the  warriors  of  the  Iliad.  This  does 
indeed  mark  a  change  since  Dr.  Drape:  expressed 
the  opinion  that  the  Mexicans  and  Pe-  ..civiiiza- 
ruvians  were  morally  and  intellectually  M°"^coand 
superior  to  the  Europeans  of  the  six-  ^^^^' 
teenth  century.^  The  reaction  from  Ju  st?xe  of 
opinion  in  which  such  an  extravagar  t<  lark  was 
even  possible  has  been  attended  with  seme  contro- 
versy ;  but  on  the  whole  Mr.  Morgan's  main  position 
has  been  steadily  and  rapidly  gaining  ground,  and 
it  is  becoming  more  and  more  clear  that  if  we  are 
to  use  language  correctly  when  we  speak  of  the  civ- 
ilizations of  Mexico  and  Peru  we  really  mean  civil- 
izations of  an  extremely  archaic  type,  considerably 

^  See  his  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe,  New  York  j, 

pp.  448,  404. 


;2S4yr,1^4aSi'',_i.»:ficAl!iv«»i»tt«?»ir:/ 


84 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


nit  :il^ 


Si!  If 


Pi 

m 
lit 

iia 

i 

i  I." 


more  archaic  than  that  of  Egypt  in  the  time  of 
the  Pharaohs.  A  "  civilization  "  like  that  of  the 
Aztecs,  without  domestic  animals  or  iron  tools, 
with  trade  still  in  the  primitive  stage  of  barter, 
with  human  sacrifices,  and  with  cannibalism,  has 
certainly  some  of  the  most  vivid  features  of  bar- 
barism. Along  with  these  primitive  features,  how- 
ever, there  seem  to  have  been  —  after  making  all 
due  allowances  —  some  features  of  luxury  and 
splendour  such  as  we  are  wont  to  associate  with 
civilization.  The  Aztecs,  moreover,  though  doubt- 
less a  fidl  ethnical  period  behind  the  ancient 
Egyptians  in  general  advancement,  had  worked 
out  a  system  of  hieroglyphic  writing,  and  had  be- 
gun to  put  it  to  some  literary  use.  It  woulJ  seem 
that  a  people  may  in  certain  special  j)oints  reach 
a  level  of  attainment  higher  than  the  level  which 
they  occupy  in  other  points.  The  Cave  men  of 
the  Glacial  period  were  ignorant  of  pottery,  and 
thus  had  not  risen  above  the  upper  status  of  sav- 
agery; but  their  artistic  talent,  upon  which  we 
have  remarked,  was  not  such  as  we  are  wont  to 
associate  with  savagery.  Other  instances  will  oc- 
cur to  us  in  the  proper  place. 

The  difficidty  which  people  usually  find  in  real- 
izing the  true  position  of  the  ancient  Mexican 
culture  arises  partly  from  the  misconceptions  which 
have  until  recently  distorted  the  facts,  and  partly 
from  the  loose  employment  of  terms  above  noticed. 
Loose  use  of  It  is  quitc  corrcct  to  speak  of  the  Aus- 
" savagery"  traliau  blackfcllows  as  "savages,"  but 
tion."  nothing  is  more  common  than  to  hear 

the  same  epithet  employed  to  characterize  Shaw- 


.IV.'^    VV 


•^"-^^^'■•■■"'-  • 


ANCIENT  AMERICA, 


85 


nees  and  Mohawks ;  and  to  call  those  Indians 
"  savages  "  is  quite  misleading.  So  on  the  other 
hand  the  term  "  civilization"  is  often  so  loosely  used 
as  to  cover  a  large  territory  belonging  to  "  barbar- 
ism." One  does  not  look  for  scientific  precision 
in  newspapers,  but  they  are  apt  to  reflect  popular 
habits  of  thought  quite  faitlifully,  and  for  that 
reason  it  is  proper  here  to  quote  from  one.  In  a 
newspaper  account  of  Mr.  Cushing's  recent  discov- 
eries of  buried  towns,  works  of  irrigation,  etc.,  in 
Arizona,  we  are  first  told  that  these  are  the  remains 
of  a  "splendid  prehistoric  civilization,"  and  the 
next  moment  we  are  told,  in  entire  unconsciousness 
of  the  contradiction,  that  the  people  who  con- 
structed these  works  had  only  stone  tools.  Now 
to  call  a  people  "  civilized  "  who  have  only  stone 
tools  is  utterly  misleading.  Nothing  but  confusion 
of  ideas  and  darkening  of  counsel  can  come  from 
such  a  misuse  of  words.  Such  a  people  may  be  in 
a  high  degree  interesting  and  entitled  to  credit  for 
what  they  have  achieved,  but  the  grade  of  culture 
which  they  have  reached  is  not  "  civilization." 

With  "savagery"  thus  encroaching  upon  its 
area  of  meaning  on  the  one  side,  and  "  civilization  " 
encroaching  on  the  other,  the  word  "  barbarism," 
as  popularly  apprehended,  is  left  in  a  vague  and 
unsatisfactory  plight.  If  we  speak  of  Montezmiia's 
people  as  barbarians  one  stage  further  advanced 
than  Mohawks,  we  are  liable  to  be  charged  with 
calling  them  "  savages."  Yet  the  term  vaiue  and 
"barbarism"  is  a  very  useful  one;  in-  iEJr"  °' 
dispensable,  indeed,  in  the  history  of  " '^*'^''"'»™- 
Iiuman  progress.     There  is  no  other  word  which 


i-1 


^j'.v^t  ,.-■  ■^t».>.>.-:.  ■>«...< 


lias 


hi 


86  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMEHWA. 

can  serve  in  its  stead  as  a  designation  of  the  enor- 
mous interval  which  begins  with  the  invention  of 
pottery  and  ends  with  the  invention  of  tlie  alphabet. 
The  popular  usage  of  the  word  is  likely  to  be- 
come more  definite  as  it  comes  to  be  more  generally 
realized  how  prodigious  that  interval  has  been. 
When  we  think  what  a  considerable  portion  of 
man's  past  existence  has  been  comprised  within  it, 
and  what  a  mar\ellous  transformation  in  human 
knowledge  and  human  faculty  has  been  gradually 
wrought  between  its  beginning  and  its  end,  the 
period  of  barbarism  becomes  invested  with  most 
thrilling  interest,  and  its  name  ceases  to  appear 
otherwise  than  respectable.  It  is  Mr.  Morgan's 
chief  title  to  fame  that  he  has  so  thoroughly  ex- 
plored this  period  and  described  its  features  with 
such  masterly  skill. 

It  is  worth  while  to  observe  that  Mr.  Morgan's 
1:  view  of  the  successive  stages  of  culture  is  one  which 

I  jl  could  not  well  have  been  marked  out  in  all  its  parts 

{ji  except   by   a    student   of    American   archaeology. 

m||j|  Aboriginal   America  is   the   richest   field   in   the 

:l|  world  for  the  study  of  barbarism.     Its  people  pre- 

sent every  gratlation  in  social  life  during  three 
etlmical  periods  —  the  upper  period  of  savagery 
and  the  lower  and  middle  periods  of  barbarism  — 
so  that  the  process  of  development  may  be  most 
systematically   and    instructively   stud- 

The  status  of      .     -i      tt    xM  it  i?        •!•  •±^ 

barbarism  is     icd.    Until  wc  havc  bEcomc  lamiliar  with 


I?"  T! 


111.  .!3 

'A 

li 


most  com- 


luosi  coin-  •       1       A  •  •    1  1  1 

piftteiyexem-  anciciit  American  society,  and  so  long 

pliflpd  in  .  .  o         1     .         i  1  1 

aiieieut  Amer-  as  our  vicw  IS  conimcd  to  the  jmases 


ica. 


of  progress  in  the  Old  World,  the  de- 
marcation between  civilized   and   uncivilized  life 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


87 


seems  too  abrupt  and  sudden ;  we  do  not  get  a  cor- 
rect measure  of  it.  The  oldest  European  tradition 
reaches  back  only  through  the  upper  period  of  bar- 
barism.^ The  middle  and  lower  periods  have  lapsed 
into  utter  oblivion,  and  it  is  only  modern  archieo- 
logical  research  that  is  beginning  to  recover  the 
traces  of  them.  But  among  the  i-ed  men  of  Amer- 
ica the  social  life  of  ages  more  remote  than  that 
of  the  lake  villages  of  Switzerland  is  in  many 
particulars  preserved  for  us  to-tlay,  and  when  we 
study  it  we  begin  to  realize  as  never  before  the  con- 
tinuity of  hmnan  develoi)ment,  its  enormous  dura- 
tion,  and  the  almost  infinite  accumulation  of  slow 
efforts  by  which  progress  has  been  achieved.  An- 
cient America  is  further  instructive  in  presenting 
the  middle  status  of  barbarism  in  a  different  form 
from  that  which  it  assumed  in  the  eastern  hemi- 
sphere. Its  most  conspicuous  outward  manifesta- 
tions, instead  of  tents  and  herds,  were  strange  and 
imposing  edifices  of  stone,  so  that  it  was  quite 
natural  that  observers  interpreting  it  from  a  basis 
of  European  experience  should  mistake  it  for  civ- 
ilization. Certain  aspects  of  that  middle  period 
may  be  studied  to-day  in  New  Mexico  and  Arizona, 
as  phases  of  the  older  periods  may  still  be  found 
among  the  wilder  tribes,  even  after  all  the  contact 
they  have  had  with  white  men.     These  Survivdis  of 

*'  ,  ...  bygoiie  epoch8 

survivals  from  antiquity  will  not  per-  of  culture. 
manently  outlive  that  contact,  and  it  is  important 
that  no  time  should  be  lost  in  gathering  and  put- 

^  Now  and  then,  perhaps,  but  very  rarely,  it  just  touches  the 
close  of  the  middle  period,  as,  e.  g.,  in  the  lines  from  Hesiod  and 
Lucretius  above  quoted. 


'•  V  ViW-^  I  Tar  T  yriTft  !• 


38  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

tinpf  on  record  all  that  can  be  learned  of  tlio  speech 
and  arts,  tlie  customs  and  beliefs,  everything  that 
goes  to  constitute  the  philology  and  anthropology 
of  the  red  men.  For  the  intelligent  and  vigorous 
work  of  this  sort  now  conducted  by  the  Bureau  of 
Ethnology  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  under 
the  direction  of  Major  Powell,  no  praise  can  be  too 
strong  and  no  encouragement  too  hearty. 

A  brief  enumeration  of  the  principal  groups  of 
Indians  will  be  helpful  in  enabling  us  to  compre- 
hend the  social  condition  of  ancient  America.  The 
groups  are  in  great  part  defined  by  differences  of 
language,  which  are  perhai)s  a  better  criterion  of 
racial  affinity  in  the  New  World  than  in  the  Old, 
because  there  seems  to  have  been  little  or  nothing 
of  that  peculiar  kind  of  conquest  with  incorporation 
resulting  in  complete  change  of  speech  which  we 
sometimes  find  in  the  Old  World ;  as,  for  example, 
when  we  see  the  Celto-Iberian  popiUation  of  Spain 
and  the  Belgic,  Celtic,  and  Aquitanian  populations 
of  Gaul  forgetting  their  native  tongues,  and  adopt- 
ing that  of  a  confederacy  of  tribes  in  Latium. 
Except  in  the  case  of  Peru  there  is  no  indication 
that  anything  of  this  sort  went  on,  or  that  there 
Tribal  society    was  anything  even  superficially  analo- 

and  iimltipli-        _  x      it  •        »J   •  '        j_      k  • 

city  of  lau-  gous  to  "  empire,  in  ancient  America. 
orTgirai  Amer-  What  strikcs  ouc  most  forcibly  at  first 
is  the  vast  number  of  American  lan- 
guages. Adelung,  in  his  "  Mithridates,"  put  the 
number  at  1,264,  and  Ludewig,  in  his  "  Literature 
of  the  American  Languages,"  put  it  roundly  at 
1,J00.     >Sguier,  on  the  other  hand,  was  content 


I 
I 


M 


ANCIENT  AMERICA, 


39 


with  400.1  The  discrepancy  arises  from  the  fact 
tliat  where  one  scholar  sees  two  or  three  distinct 
hinguages  another  sees  two  or  three  dijilects  of 
one  lanf:^uage  and  counts  them  as  one ;  it  is  like 
the  difficiUty  which  naturalists  find  in  agreeing  as 
to  what  are  species  and  what  are  only  varieties. 
The  grejit  number  of  languages  and  dialects 
spoken  by  a  sparse  population  is  one  mark  of  the 
universal  prevalence  of  a  rude  and  primitive  form 
of  tribal  society.^ 

The  lowest  tribes  in  North  America  were  those 
that  are  still  to  be  found  in  California,  in  the  val- 
ley of  the  Columbia  river,  and  on  the  shores  of 
Puget  Sound.  The  Athabaskans  of  Hudson's 
Bay  were  on  about  the  same  level  of  savagery. 
They  made  no  pottery,  knew  nothing  of  horticid' 
ture,  depended  for  subsistence  entirely 

,  ,  ■'     Tribes  in  the 

upon  bread-roots,  nsh,  and  game,  and  upper  status 
thus  had  no  village  life.  They  were 
mere  prowlers  in  the  upper  status  of  savagery.^ 
The  Apaches  of  Arizona,  preeminent  even  among 
red  men  for  atrocious  cruelty,  are  an  offshoot 
from  the  Athabaskan  stock.  Very  little  better 
are  the  Shoshones  and  Bannocks  that  still  wander 


1  Winsor,  "  Bibliograplucal  Notes  on  American  Linguistics," 
in  his  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist.,  vol.  i.  pp.  420-428, gives  an  admirable 
survey  of  the  subject.  See  also  Filling's  bibliographical  bulletins 
of  Iroquoian,  Siouan,  and  Muskhogean  languages,  published  by  the 
Bureau  of  Ethnology. 

^  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,  pp.  147-174. 

^  For  a  good  account  of  Indians  in  the  upper  status  of  savagery 
until  modified  by  contact  with  civilization,  see  Myron  Eells,  "  The 
Twana,  Chemakum,  and  Klallam  Indians  of  Washington  Terri- 
tory," Smithsonian  Report,  1887,  pp.  605-681. 


40  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

among  the  lonely  bare  mountains  and  over  the 
weird  sage-brush  plains  of  Idaho.  The  region 
west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  north  of  New 
Mexico  is  thus  the  region  of  savagery. 

Between  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  the  Atlantic 
coast  the  aborigines,  at  the  time  of  the  Discovery, 
might  have  been  divided  mto  six  or  seven  groups, 
of  which  three  were  situated  mainly  to  the  east 
of  the  Mississippi  river,  the  others  mainly  to  the 
west  of  it.  All  were  in  the  lower  period  of  bar- 
barism.    Of  the  western  groups,  by  far 

The  Dakota  ,  i      V!    i 

family  of  tlic  most  numcrous  were  the  Dakotas, 
comprising  the  Sioux,  Poncas,  Omahas, 
lowas,  Kaws,  Otoes,  and  Missouris.  From  the 
headwaters  of  the  Mississij^pi  their  territory  ex- 
tended westward  on  both  sides  of  the  Missouri  for 
a  thousand  miles.  One  of  their  tribes,  the  Win- 
nebagos,  had  crossed  the  Mississipi)i  and  pressed 
into  the  region  between  that  river  and  Lake 
Michigan. 

A  second  group,  ver^  lall  in  numbers  but  ex- 
tremely interesting  to  the  student  of  ethnology, 
comprises  the  Minnitarees  and  Mandans  on  the 
upper  Missouri.^  The  remnants  of  these  tribes 
now  live  togeth<^r  in  the  same  village,  and  in  per- 
sonal appearance,  as  well  as  in  intelligence,  they 
are  described  as  superior  to  any  other  red  men 

*  Au  excellent  description  of  them,  profusely  illustrated  with 
coloured  pictures,  may  he  found  in  Catlin's  North  American  In- 
dians, vol.  i.  pp.  00-207,  7th  ed.,  London,  1848 ;  the  author  was 
an  accuratg  and  trustworthy  observer.  Some  v/rit'.is  have  placed 
those  tribes  in  the  Dakota  group  because  of  the  large  number  of 
Dakota  words  in  their  laufjuago  ;  but  these  are  probably  borrowed 
words,  like  the  numerous  French  words  in  English. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


41 


north  of   New  Mexico.     From  their  first  discov* 
ery,    by   the    brothers    La   Verendrye  ^   „.    . 

.•''•'  -^        The  Minni- 

ill   1742,    down    to    Mr.    Catlin's  visit  tareesand 

^  Mandans. 

nearly  a  century  later,  there  was  no 
change  in  their  condition,^  but  shortly  afterward, 
in  1838,  the  greater  part  of  them  were  swept 
away  by  small-pox.  The  excellence  of  their  horti- 
culture, the  framework  of  their  houses,  and  their 
peculiar  religious  ceremonies  early  attracted  at- 
tention. Upjn  Mr.  Catlin  they  made  such  an 
impression  that  he  fancied  there  must  be  an  infu- 
sion of  white  blood  in  them ;  and  after  'he  fashion 
of  those  days  he  sought  to  account  for  it  by  a  ref- 
erence to  the  legend  of  Madoc,  a  ^^'^elsll  prince 
■who  was  dimly  imagined  to  have  sailed  to  America 
about  1170.  He  thought  that  Madoc's  party  might 
liav^e  sailed  to  the  Mississippi  and  founded  a  col- 
ony wJiich  ascended  that  river  a'xl  the  Ohio,  built 
the  famous  mounds  of  the  Ohio  valley,  and  finally 
migrated  to  the  uj)per  Missouri.^  To  this  specu- 
lation was  appended  the  inevitable  list  of  words 
which  happen  to  sound  somewhat  alike  in  Man- 
dan  and  in  Welsh.  In  the  realm  of  free  fancy 
everything-  is  easy.  That  there  was  a  Madoc  who 
went  somewhere  in  1170  is  quite  possible,  but  as 
shrewd  old  John  Smith  said  about  it,  "where 
tliis  i)lace  was  no  history  can  sliow."^     But  one 

^  See  Francis  Parkman's  paper,  "The  Discovery  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains,"  Atlantic  Monthly,  June,  18S8.  I  hope  the  apj^ear- 
ance  of  this  article,  two  years  ago,  indicates  that  we  have  not 
much  longLf  to  \vait  for  the  next  of  that  magnificent  series  of 
vohimes  ,n  tlie  history  of  the  French  in  North  America.. 

-  North  American  Indians,  vol.  ii..  Appendix  A. 

^  k^mitli's  Generall  llistorie  of  Virginia,  New  England  and  tk 
Summer  Isles,  p  1,  Loudon,  1026. 


42  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

part  of  Mr.  Catlin's  speculation  may  have  hit 
somewhat  nearer  the  truth.  It  is  possible  that 
the  Minnitarees  or  the  Mandans,  or  both,  may  be 
a  remnant  of  some  of  those  Mound-builders  in 
the  Mississippi  valley  concerning  wliom  something 
will  presently  be  said. 

The  third  group  in  this  western  region  consists 
of  the  Pawnees  and  Arickarees,^  of  the 
Platte  valley  in  Nebraska,  with  a  few 
kindred  tribes  farther  to  the  south. 

Of  the  three  groups  eastward  of  the  Mississippi 
we  may  first  mention  the  Maskoki,  or  Muskhogees, 
Maskoki  fam-  Consisting  of  the  Choctaws,  Chickasaws, 
^^'  Seminoles,  and  others,  with  the  Creek 

confederacy.^  These  tribes  were  intelligent  and 
powerful,  with  a  culture  well  advanced  toward 
the  end  of  the  lower  period  of  barbarism. 

The  Algon(piin  family,  bordering  at  its  south- 
ern limits  upon  the  Maskoki,  had  a  vast  range 
northeasterly  along  the  At-'^itic  coast  until  it 
reached  the  confines  of  Labrador,  and  north- 
westerly through  the  region  of  the  Great  Lakes 
and  as  far  as  the   Churchill  river  ^  to  the  west  of 

^  For  the  history  and  ethnologfy  of  these  interesting-  tribes,  seo 
three  learned  papers  by  J.  B.  Dunbar,  in  Magazine  of  American 
History,  vol.  iv.  pp.  241-281  ;  vol.  v.  pp.  .■>2I-;M2  ;  vol.  viii.  pp. 
"Toi-ToO ;  also  GrinneU's  Pawnee  Hero  Stories  and  Folk-Tales, 
New  York,  1889. 

"  These  tribes  of  the  Gulf  region  were  formerly  pfr juped,  along 
■with  others  not  akin  to  them,  as  "  Mobilians."  The  Cherokeea 
•were  supposed  to  belong  to  the  Maskoki  family,  but  they  have 
lately  been  declared  an  intrusive  o'^shoot  from  the  Iroquois  stock. 
The  remnants  of  another  alien  tribe,  tlie  once  famous  Natchez, 
•were  adopted  into  the  Creek  confederacy.  For  a  full  account  of 
these  tribes,  see  Qatschet,  A  Migration  Legend  of  the  Creek  In- 
dians,  vol.  i.,  Philadelphia,  1884. 

^  Huwse,  Grammar  of  the  Cree  Language,  Londo  \  1805,  p.  vii. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


43 


Hudson's  Bay.      In  other  words,  the  Algonqulns 
were  bounded  on  the  south  by  the  Maskoki,^  on 
the  west  by  the  Dakotas,  on  the  north- 
west by  the  Athabaskans,  on  the  north-  family  of 

''  .  tribes. 

east  by  Eskimos,  and  on  the  east  by 
the  ocean.  Between  Lake  Superior  and  the  Red 
Kiver  of  the  North  the  Crees  had  their  hunting 
grounds,  and  closely  related  to  them  were  the 
Pottawatomies,  Ojibwas,  and  Ottawas.  One  off- 
shoot, including  the  Blaclcfeet,  Cheyennes,  and 
Arrapahos,  roamed  as  far  west  as  the  Rocky 
Mountains.  The  great  triangle  between  the  u}> 
per  Mississlpi)i  and  the  Ohio  was  occupied  by  the 
Menomonees  and  Kickapoos,  the  Sacs  and  Foxes, 
the  Miamis  and  Illinois,  and  the  Sha^vnees.  Along 
the  coast  region  the  principal  Algonquin  tribes 
v/ere  the  Powhatans  of  Virginia,  the  Lenape  or 
Delawares,  the  IVIunsees  or  Minisinks  of  the  moun- 
tains about  the  Susquehanna,  the  Mohegans  on 
the  Hudson,  the  Adironda(!ks  between  that  river 
and  the  St.  Lawrence,  the  Narragansetts  and  their 
congeners  in  New  England,  and  finally  the  Mic- 
macs  and  Wabenaki  far  doAvn  East,  is  the  last 
name  implies.  There  is  a  tradition,  supported  to 
some  extent  by  linguistic  evidence,^  that  the  Mo- 
hegans, with  their  cousins  the  Pequots,  were  more 
closely  related  to  the  Shawnees  than  to  the  Dela- 
ware or  coast  group.  While  all  the  Algonquin 
tribes  were  in  the  lower  period  of  barbarism,  there 
was  a  noticeable  gradation  among  tlunn,  the  Crees 

^  Except  in  so  far  as  the  Cherokoes  and  Tuscaroras,  presently 
to  be  mentioned,  were  interposed. 

'"'  Briutou,  The  Lenape  and  their  Legends,  p.  30. 


44  TUE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

and  O  jib  was  of  the  fai*  North  standing  lowest  in 
culture,  and  the  Shawnees,  at  their  southernmost 
limits,  standing  highest. 

We  have  observed  the  Dakota  tribes  pressing 
eastward  against  their  neighbours  and  sending  out 
an  offshoot,  the  Winnebagos,  across   the  Missis- 
sippi river.     It  has  been  supposed  that  the  Huron- 
Iroquois  oToup  of  tribes  was  a  more  re- 

Huron-Iro-  nr.   f  i>  i         t-w    i  mi  • 

quois  famuy  of  mote  offshoot  from  the  Dakotas.     1  his 

tribes.  •  i  i  • 

is  very  doubtful ;  but  in  the  thirteenth 
or  fourteenth  century  the  general  trend  of  the  Hu- 
ron-Iroquois movement  seems  to  have  been  east- 
ward, either  in  successive  swarms,  or  in  a  single 
swarm,  which  became  divided  and  scattered  by 
segmentation,  as  was  common  with  all  Indian 
tribes.  They  seem  early  to  have  proved  their 
superiority  over  the  Algonquins  in  bravery  and 
intelligence.  Their  line  of  invasion  seems  to  have 
run  eastward  to  Niagara,  and  thereabouts  to  have 
bifurcated,  one  line  following  the  valley  of  the  St. 
Lawrence,  and  the  other  that  of  the  Susquehanna. 
The  Hurons  established  themselves  in  the  penin- 
sula between  the  lake  that  bears  their  name  and 
Lake  Ontario.  South  of  them  and  along  the 
northern  shore  of  Lake  Erie  were  settled  their 
kindred,  afterward  called  the  "  Neutral  Nation."  ^ 
On  the  southern  shore  the  Eries  planted  themselves, 
while  the  Susquehannocks  pushed  on  in  a  direc- 
tion sufficiently  described  by  their  name.    Farthest 

^  Because  they  refused  to  take  part  in  the  strife  between  the 
Hurons  an<l  the  Five  Nations.  Their  Indian  name  was  Attiwan- 
darons.  They  were  unsurpassed  for  ferocity.  See  ParkmaUf 
Jesuits  in  North  America,  p.  xliv. 


^1 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


45 


of  all  penetrated  the  Tuscaroras,  even  into  the 
pine  forests  of  North  Carolina,  where  they  main- 
tained themselves  in  isolation  from  their  kindred 
until  1715.  These  invasions  resulted  in  some  dis- 
placement of  Algonquin  tribes,  and  began  to  sap 
the  strength  of  the  confederacy  or  alliance  in 
which  the  Delawares  had  held  a  foremost  j^lace. 

But  by  far  the  most  famous  and  important  of 
the  Iluron-Iroquois  were  those  that  followed  the 
northern  shore  of  Lake  Ontario  into  the  valley  of 
the  St.  Lawrence.  In  that  direction  their  progress 
was  checked  by  the  Algonquin  tribe  of  Adiron- 
dacks,  but  they  succeeded  in  retaining  a  foothold 
in  the  country  for  a  long  time  ;  for  in  1535  Jacques 
Cartier  found  on  the  site  which  he  named  Mont- 
real an  Iroquois  vilbgc  w}\ich  had  vanished  before 
Champlain's  arrival  seventy  years  later.  Those 
Iroquois  who  were  thrust  back  in  the  struggle  for 
the  St.  Lawrence  valley,  early  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  made  their  way  across  Lake  Ontario  and 
established  themselves  at  the  mouth  of  the  Oswego 
river.  They  were  then  in  three  small  tribes,  —  the 
Mohawks,  Onondagas,  and  Senecas,  —  but  as  they 
grew  in  mimbers  and  spread  eastward  to  the  Hud- 
son and  westward  to  the  Genesee,  the  intermediate 
tribes  of  Oneidas  and  Cayugas  were  formed  by  seg- 
mentation.i  About  1450  the  five  tribes  —  after- 
wards known  as  the  Five  Nations —  The  Five 
were  joined  in  a  confederacy  in  pursu-  ^'»*""'^' 
ance  of  the  wise  counsel  which  Hayowentha,  or 
Hiawatha,^  according  to  the  legend,  whispered  intft 

1  Morfjan,  A  ncient  Societi/,  p.  125. 

3  Whetlier  there  was  ever  such  a  person  as  Hiawatha  is,  to  saj 


■  i 


4G 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


the  ears  of  the  Onondaga  sachem,  Daganowecla. 
This  union  of  their  resources  combined,  with  their 
native  bravery  and  cunning,  and  their  occupation  of 
the  most  commanding  military  position  in  eastern 
North  America,  to  render  them  invincible  among 
red  men.  They  exterminated  their  old  enemies 
the  Adirondacks,  and  pushetl  the  Mohegans  over 
the  mountains  from  the  Hudson  river  to  the  Con- 
necticut. When  they  first  encountered  white  men 
in  1609  their  name  had  become  a  terror  in  New 
England,  insomuch  that  as  soon  as  a  single  IVIohawk 
was  caught  sight  of  by  the  Indians  in  that  country, 
they  would  raise  the  cry  from  hill  to  hill,  "  A  Mo- 
hawk !  a  Mohawk !  "  and  forthwith  would  flee  like 
sheep  before  wolves,  never  dreaming  of  resistance.' 
After  the  Five  Nations  had  been  supplied  with 
firearms  by  the  Dutch  their  power  increased  with 
portentoi;s  rapidity .^  At  first  they  souglit  to  per- 
suade their  neighbours  of  kindred  blood  and  speech, 
the  Eries  and  others,  to  join  their  confederacy ; 

the  least,  doubtful.  As  a  traditional  cnlture-hero  his  attributes 
are  those  of  loskeha,  Michabo,  Quetzalcoatl,  Viracoclia,  and  all 
that  claas  of  sky-gods  to  which  I  shiill  again  have  occasion  to  refer. 
See  Brinton's  Myths  of  the  New  World,  p.  172.  When  the  Indian 
speaks  of  Hiawatha  whisperini''  advice  to  Daganoweda,  his  mean- 
ing is  probably  the  same  as  that  of  the  ancient  Greek  wlien  he 
attributed  the  wisdom  of  some  mortal  hero  to  wliispered  advi(;c  from 
Zeus  or  his  messenger  Hermes.  Longfellow's  famous  poem  is 
bas*  upon  Schoolcraft's  book  entitled  The  Hiawatha  Legends, 
vrhun  is  really  a  misnomer,  for  the  book  consists  chiefly  of  Ojibwa 
stories  about  Maiiabozho,  son  of  the  West  Wind.  There  was 
really  no  such  legend  of  Hiawatha  as  tliat  whidi  the  poet  has 
immortalized.  See  Hale,  The  Iroquois  Book  of  Rites,  pp.  3G, 
180-1  S:3. 

^  Cadwallader  Colden,  History  of  the  Five  Nations,  New  York, 
1727. 

2  Morgan,  League  of  the  Iroquois,  p.  12. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


47 


and  failing  in  this  tlioy  went  to  war  and  extermi- 
nated theni.^  Then  they  overthrew  one  Algonquin 
tribe  after  another  until  in  1G90  their  career  was 
checked  by  the  Frencli.  By  that  time  they  had 
reduced  to  a  tributary  condition  most  of  the  Algon- 
quin tribes,  even  to  the  Mississippi  river.  Some 
writers  have  spoken  of  the  empire  of  the  Iroquois, 
and  it  has  been  surmised  that,  if  they  had  not  been 
interfered  with  by  white  men,  they  might  have 
played  a  part  analogous  to  that  of  the  Romans  in 
the  Old  World ;  but  there  is  no  real  similarity  be- 
tween the  two  cases.  The  Romans  acquired  their 
mighty  strength  by  incorporating  vanquished  peo- 
ples into  their  own  body  politic.^  No  American 
aborigines  ever  had  a  glimmering  of  the  process  of 
state-building  after  the  Roman  fashion.  No  incor- 
poration resulted  from  the  victories  of  the  Iroquois. 
Wliere  their  burnings  and  massacres  stopped  short 
of  extermination,  they  simply  took  tribute,  which 
was  as  far  as  state-craft  had  got  in  the  lower  period 
of  barbarism.  General  Walker  has  summed  up 
their  military  career  in  a  single  sentence :  "  They 
were  the  scourge  of  God  upon  the  aborigines  of 
the  continent."  ^ 

The   six   groups    here    enumerated  —  Dakota, 
Mandan,  Pawnee,   Maskoki,  Algonquin,  Iroquois 

1  All  except  the  distant  Tuscaroras,  who  in  1715  migrated  from 
North  Carolina  to  New  York,  and  joining  the  Iroquois  league 
made  it  the  Six  Nations.  All  the  rest  of  the  outlying  Huron- 
Iroquois  stock  was  wiped  out  of  existence  before  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  except  the  remnant  of  Hurons  since  known 
as  Wyandots. 

'^  See  my  Beginnings  of  New  England,  chap.  i. 

8  F.  A.  Walker,  "The  Indian  Question,"  North  American  Be* 
view,  April,  1873,  p.  370. 


1 


48  THE  DISCOVERT  OF  AMERICA. 

—  made  up  the  great  body  of  the  aborigines  of 
North  America  who  at  the  time  of  the  Discovery 
lived  in  the  lower  status  of  barbarism.  All  made 
pottery  of  various  degrees  of  rudeness.  Their 
tools  and  weapons  were  of  the  Neolithic  type, — 
stone  either  polished  or  accurately  and 

Horticulture  -•    .•       n  i  •  ^  t^  .^ 

must  be  (lis-  artistically  chipped.  ±or  the  most 
from  field  part  tlicy  lived  in  stockaded  villages, 
and  cultivated  maize,  beans,  pumjikins, 
squashes,  sunflowers,  and  tobacco.  Tliey  depended 
for  subsistence  partly  upon  such  vegetable  jirod- 
ucts,  partly  upon  hunting  and  fishing,  tlie  women 
generally  attending  to  the  horticulture,  the  men  to 
the  chase.  Horticulture  is  an  appropriate  desig- 
nation for  this  stage  in  which  the  ground  is  merely 
scratched  with  stone  spades  and  hoes.  It  is  incip- 
ient agi'iculture,  but  should  be  carefully  distin- 
guished from  i\\Q  field  agriculture  in  which  exten- 
sive pieces  of  land  are  subdued  by  the  jilough. 
The  assistance  of  domestic  animals  is  needed  be- 
fore such  work  can  be  carried  far,  and  it  does  not 
appear  that  there  was  an  approach  to  field  agri- 
culture in  any  part  of  pre-Columbian  America 
except  Peru,  where  men  were  harnessed  to  the 
plough,  and  perhaps  occasionally  llamas  were  used 
in  the  same  way.^  Where  subsistence  depended 
upon  rude  horticulture  eked  out  by  game  and  fish, 
it  required  a  large  territory  to  support  a  sparse 
population.  The  great  diversity  of  languages 
contributed  to  maintain  the  isolation  of  tribes 
and  prevent  extensive  confederation.     Intertribal 

^  See  Humboldt,  Ansichten  der  Natur,  3d  ed.,  Stuttgart,  1849, 
vol.  i.  p.  203. 


■  IS 


»'■■ 


h  ll« 


iLl 


..••j-sSLi 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  49 

warfare  was  perpetual,  save  now  and  then  for 
truces  of  brief  duration.  Warfare  was  attended 
by  wholesale  massacre.  As  many  prisoners  as 
coidd  be  managed  were  taken  home  by  Perpetual 
their  captors ;  in  some  cases  they  were  ^'"■'*'"^' 
adopted  into  the  tribe  of  the  latter  as  a  means  of 
increasing  its  fighting  strength,  otherwise  they 
were  put  to  death  with  lingering  torments.^  There 
was  nothing  which  afforded  the  red  men  such  ex- 
quisite delight  as  the  spectacle  of  live  human  flesh 
lacerated  with  stone  knives  or  hissing  under  the 
touc^h  of  firebrands,  and  for  elaborate  ingenuity  in 
devising  tortures  they  have  never  been  equalled.'^ 

^  "  Women  and  children  joined  in  these  fiendish  atrocities,  and 
•when  at  lengtli  the  victim  yiehled  up  his  life,  his  heart,  if  he  were 
brave,  was  ripped  from  liis  body,  cut  in  pieces,  broiled,  and  given 
to  the  young  men,  under  the  belief  that  it  would  increase  their 
courage ;  they  drank  his  l)lood,  thinking  it  would  make  them 
more  wary ;  and  finally  his  body  was  divided  limb  from  limb, 
roasted  or  thrown  into  the  seething  pot,  and  hands  and  feet, 
arms  and  legs,  head  and  trunk,  were  all  stewed  into  a  horrid 
mess  and  eaten  amidst  yells,  songs,  and  dances."  Jeffries  Wy- 
man,  in  Seventh  lieport  of  Peabody  Museum,  p.  .'57.  For  details 
of  the  most  appalling  chai'acter,  see  Butterfield's  History  of  the 
Girtys,  pp.  170-182  ;  Stone's  Life  of  Joseph  Brunt,  vol.  ii.  pp.  31, 
32;  Dodge's  Plains  of  the  Great  West,  p.  418,  and  Our  Wild  In- 
dians, pp.  525-521);  Parkman's  Jesuits  in  North  America,  pp. 
387-301 ;  and  many  other  places  in  Parkman's  writings. 

*  One  often  hears  it  said  that  the  cruelty  of  the  Indians  was 
not  greater  than  that  of  mediiBval  Europeans,  as  exeni2)liHed  in 
judicial  torture  and  in  the  horroi-s  of  the  Inquisition.  Hut  in 
such  a  judgment  there  is  lack  of  due  di.-  rimination.  In  the 
practice  of  torture  by  civil  and  ecclesiastical  tribunals  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  there  was  a  definite  moral  purpose  whi(^li,  however 
lamentably  mistaken  or  perverted,  gave  it  a  very  difi'eront  char- 
acter from  torture  wantonly  inflicted  for  amusement.  The  atro- 
cities formerly  attendant  upon  the  sack  of  towns,  as  e.  g.  Beziers. 
Magdeburg,  etc.,  might  more  properly  be  regarded  as  an  illustra* 


50  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

Cannibjilism  was  quite  commonly  practised.^     The 

tion  of  the  survival  of  a  spirit  fit  only  for  tlio  lowest  barbarism  : 
ami  the  Spaiiisli  t'oiKjueror.s  of  the  New  World  tbeiuselves  often 
exhibited  cruelty  Hueh  as  even  Indians  seldom  surpass.  Seo  be- 
low, vol.  ii.  p.  444.  In  spite  of  such  cjises,  however,  it  must  be 
held  tliat  for  artistic  skill  in  inflicting  the  greatest  possible  in- 
tensity of  excruciating  pain  upon  every  nerve  in  the  body,  tlio 
Spaniard  was  a  bungler  and  a  novice  as  compared  with  the  In- 
dian. See  Dodge's  Our  Wild  Indianti,  pp.  .")o(i-.">:jS.  (.'olonel 
Dodge  was  in  familiar  contact  with  Indians  for  luoro  than  thirty 
years,  and  writes  with  fairness  and  discrimination. 

In  truth  the  question  as  to  comparative  cruelty  is  not  so  much 
one  of  race  as  of  occupation,  except  in  so  far  as  race  is  moulded 
by  long  occupation.  The  "  old  Adam,"  5.  e.  the  inheritance  from 
our  brute  ancestors,  is  very  strong  in  the  human  race.  Callous- 
ness to  the  suffering  of  others  than  self  is  part  of  this  brute-in- 
heritance, and  under  the  influence  of  certain  habits  and  occu- 
pations this  germ  of  callousness  may  be  developed  to  almost  any 
height  of  devilish  cruelty.  In  the  lower  stages  of  culttire  the 
lack  of  political  aggregation  on  a  large  scale  is  attended  with 
incessant  warfare  in  the  shape  in  which  it  comes  home  to  every- 
body's door.  This  state  of  things  keeps  alive  the  passion  of  re- 
venge and  stimulates  cruelty  to  the  highest  degree.  As  long  as 
such  a  state  of  things  endures,  as  it  did  in  Europe  to  a  limited 
extent  throughout  the  Middle  Ages,  there  is  sure  to  be  a  dread- 
iul  amount  of  cruelty.  The  change  in  the  conditions  of  modern 
warfare  has  been  a  very  important  factor  in  the  rapidly  increas- 
ing mildness  and  humanity  of  modern  times.  See  my  lieyinnings 
of  Neio  England,  pp.  220-221).  Something  more  will  be  said 
hereafter  with  reference  to  the  special  causes  concerned  in  the 
cruelty  and  brutality  of  the  Spaniards  in  America.  Meanwhile 
it  may  be  observed  in  the  present  connection,  that  the  Spanish 
taskmasters  who  mutilated  and  burned  their  slaves  were  not  rep- 
resentative types  of  their  own  race  to  anything  like  the  same 
extent  as  the  Indians  who  tortured  Br^beuf  or  (.'rawford.  If 
|l|  the  fiendish  Pedrarias  was  a  Spaniard,  so  too  was  the  saintly  Las 

y  Casas.     The  latter  type  would  be  as  impossible  among  barbari- 

ans as  an  Aristotle  or  a  Beethoven.  Indeed,  though  there  ire 
writers  who  would  like  to  prove  the  contrarj',  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  that  type  has  ever  attained  to  perfection  except  under 
the  influence  of  Christianity. 

*  See  the  evidence  collected  by  Jeffries  Wjman,  in  Seventh  Be- 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


61 


scalps  of  slain  oiieniies  were  alv/ays  taken,  and 
initil  they  had  attained  such  ti()i)hies  the  yoiui<^ 
men  were  not  likely  to  find  favour  in  the  eyes  of 
women.  The  Indian's  notions  of  morality  were 
those  that  belong  to  that  state  of  society  in  whicdi 
the  tribe  is  the  largest  well-establish;'d  jxditieal 
aggregate.  Murder  without  the  tribe  was  meri- 
torious unless  it  entailed  risk  of  war  at  an  obvious 
disadvantages ;  nnu'der  within  the  tribe  was  either 
revenged  by  blood  feud  or  eonn)ounded  by  a  i)n's- 
ent  given  to  the  victim's  kinsmen.  Such  rudi- 
mentary wergild  was  often  reckoned  in  wanii)um, 
or  strings  of  l)eads  made  of  a  kind  of  mussel  shell, 
and  i)ut  to  divers  uses,  as  personal  ornament, 
mnemonic  record,  and  llnally  money,  lieligious 
thought  was  in  the  fetishistic  or  animistic  stage,^ 
while  many  tribes  had  risen  to  a  vague  conception 
of  tutelar  deities  embodied  in  human  or  animal 
forms.  Myth-tales  abounded,  and  the  folk-lore  of 
the  red  men  is  found  to  be  extremely  interesting 
and  instructive.^     Their  religion  consisted  mainly 

•port  of  Peahodij  Miisrum,  pp.  2T-37 ;  cf.  Wake,  Evolution  of  Mo- 
rality, vol.  i.  p.  24;5.  Many  illustrations  are  given  by  Mr.  Park- 
man.  In  tlii.s  connection  it  may  be  observed  that  the  name 
"Mohawk"  means  "Cannibal."  It  is  an  Algonquin  word,  ap- 
plied to  this  Iroquois  tribe  by  their  enemies  in  the  Connecticut 
valley  and  about  the  lower  Hudson.  The  name  by  which  the 
Mohawks  called  themselves  was  "  Caniengas,"  or  "  People-at- 
the-Flint."     See  Hale,  The  Iroquois  Hook  of  Rites,  p.  l"-*. 

^  For  accounts  and  explanations  of  animism  see  Tylor's  rrimt' 
live  Culture,  London,  1871,  2  vols.  ;  Caspari,  Urgeschichte  der 
Minsrhlicit,  heipsic,  ISTT,  2  vols.;  Spencer's  Principles  of  Soci- 
ology, part  i.  ;  and  my  Myths  and  Mythniakers,  chap.  vii. 

^  No  time  should  be  lost  in  gathering  and  recording  every 
scrap  of  this  folk-lore  that  can  be  found.  The  American  Folk- 
Lore  Society,  founded  chiefly  through  the  exertions  of  my  friend 


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62 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


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in  a  devout  belief  in  witchcraft.  No  well-defined 
priestly  class  had  been  evolved ;  the  so-called 
"medicine  men"  were  mere  conjurers,  though 
possessed  of  considerable  influence. 

But  none  of  the  characteristics  of  barbarous 
society  above  specified  will  carry  us  so  far  toward 
realizing  the  gulf  which  divides  it  from  civilized 
society  as  the  imperfect  development  of  its  do- 
mestic relations.  The  importance  of  this  subject 
is  such  as  to  call  for  a  few  words  of  special  eluci- 
dation. 

Thirty  years  ago,  when  Sir  Henry  Maine  pub- 
lished that  magnificent  treatise  on  Ancient  Law, 
which,  when  considered  in  all  its  potency  of  sug- 
gestiveness,  has  perhaps  done  more  than  any 
other  single  book  of  our  century  toward  placing 
the  study  of  history  upon  a  scientific  basis,  he  be- 
gan by  showing  that  in  primitive  soci- 
ety the  individual  is  nothing  and  the 
state  nothing,  while  the  family-group  is  everything, 
and  that  the  progress  of  civilization  politically  has 


Ancient  Law. 


Ii 


I    i: 


f 


Mr.  W.  W.  Newell,  and  organized  January  4, 1888,  is  already  doing 
excellent  work  and  promises  to  become  a  valuable  aid,  within  its 
field,  to  the  work  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology.  Of  the  Journal 
of  American  Folk-Lort,  published  for  the  society  by  Messrs. 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  nine  ntimbera  have  appeared,  and  the 
reader  will  find  them  full  of  valuable  information.  One  may  also 
profitably  consult  Knortz's  Miihrchen  und  Sagen  der  nordamerika- 
nischen  Indianer,  Jena,  1871 ;  Brinton's  Myths  of  the  New  World, 
N.  Y.,  18()8,  and  his  Ainerican  Ilero-Mi/thsi  VhWn.,  1882  ;  Leland's 
Algonquin  Legends  of  New  England,  Boston,  1884;  Mrs.  Emerson's 
Indian  Myths,  Boston,  1884.  Some  brief  reflections  and  criticisms 
of  much  value,  in  relation  to  aboriginal  American  folk-lore,  may 
bo  found  in  Curtin's  Myths  and  Folk-Lore  of  Ireland,  pp.  12-27. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  53 

consisted  on  the  one  hand  in  the  ag^egation  and 
buikling  up  of  family-groups  through  intermediate 
tribal  organizations  into  states,  and  on  the  other 
hand  in  the  disentanglement  of  individuals  from 
the  family  thraldom.  In  other  words,  we  began 
by  having  no  political  communities  larger  than 
clans,  and  no  bond  of  political  union  except  blood 
relationship,  and  in  this  state  of  things  the  indi- 
vidual, as  to  his  rights  and  obligations,  was  sub- 
merged in  the  clan.  We  at  length  come  to  have 
great  nations  like  the  English  or  the  French,  in 
which  blood-relationship  as  a  bond  of  political 
union  is  no  longer  indispensable  or  even  much 
thought  of,  and  in  which  the  individual  citizen  is 
the  possessor  of  legal  rights  and  subject  to  legal 
obligations.  No  one  in  our  time  can  forget  how 
beautifully  Sir  Henry  Maine,  with  his  profound 
laiowledge  of  early  Aryan  law  and  custom,  from 
Ireland  to  Hindustan,  delineated  the  slow  growth 
of  individual  ownership  of  property  and  individ- 
ual resiJonsibility  for  delict  and  crime  out  of  an 
earlier  stage  in  which  ownership  and  responsibility 
belonged  only  to  family-groups  or  clans. 

In  all  these  brilliant  studies  Sir  Henry  Maine 
started  with  the  patriarchal  family  as  we  find  it  at 
the  dawn  of  history  among  all  })eoplos  of  Aryan 
and  Semitic  speech,  —  the  patriarchal 
family   of  the  ancient  lioman  and  the  ar.'hrrfmi.iiy 

,     T  .1         n        M       •  I'll-         not  primitive. 

ancient  Jew,  the  lamily  in  which  kin- 
ship is  reckoned  through  males,  and  in  which  all 
authority  centres  in  the  eldest  male-,  and  descends 
to  his  eldest  son.     Maine  treated  this  patriarchal 
family  as  primitive ;  but  his  great  book  had  hardly 


64 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


appeared  when  other  scholars,  more  familiar  than 
he  with  races  in  savagery  or  in  the  lower  status  of 
barbarism,  showed  that  his  view  was  too  restricted. 
We  do  not  get  back  to  primitive  society  by  study- 
ing Greeks,  Romans,  and  Jews,  peoples  who  had 
nearly  emerged  from  the  later  period  of  barbarism 
when  we  first  know  them.^  Their  patriarchal  fam- 
ily was  perfected  in  shape  during  the  later  period 
of  barbarism,  and  it  was  preceded  by  a  much  ruder 
and  less  definite  form  of  family-group  in  which 
Idnship  was  reckoned  only  through  the  mother, 
and  the  headship  never  descended  from  father  to 
son.  As  so  often  happens,  this  discovery  was 
made  almost  simultaneously  by  two  investigators, 
each  working  in  ignorance  of  what  the  other  was 
doing.  In  1861,  the  same  year  in  which  "•  Ancient 
Law  "  was  published.  Professor  Bachofen,  of  Basel, 
•  "  Mother-  published  his  famous  book,  "  Das  Mut- 
right."  terrecht,"  of  which  his  co-discoverer  and 

rival,  after  taking  exception  to  some  of  his  state- 
ments, thus  cordially  writes  :    "  It  remains,  how- 

1  Until  lately  our  acquaintance  with  human  history  was  derived 
almost  exclusively  from  literary  memorials,  among  which  the 
Bible,  the  Homeric  poems,  and  the  Vedas,  carried  us  back  about 
as  far  as  literature  could  take  us.  It  was  natural,  therefore,  to 
suppose  that  the  society  of  the  times  of  Abraham  or  Agamemnon 
was  ' '  primitive, ' '  and  the  wisest  scholars  reasoned  upon  such  an 
assumption.  With  vision  thus  restricted  to  civilized  man  and  his 
ideas  and  works,  people  felt  free  to  speculate  about  uncivilized 
races  (generally  grouped  together  indiscriminately  aa  "  savages  ") 
according  to  any  d.  priori  whim  that  might  happen  to  captivate 
their  fancy.  But  the  discoveries  of  the  hvst  half-century  have 
opened  such  stupendous  vistiis  of  the  past  that  the  age  of  Abra- 
ham seems  but  as  yesterday-  The  state  of  society  described  in  the 
book  of  Genesis  had  live  entire  ethnical  periods,  and  the  greater 
part  of  a  sixth,  behind  it ;  and  its  institutions  were,  comparatively 
speaking,  modero. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


55 


ever,  after  all  qualifications  and  deductions,  that 
Bachofen,  before  any  one  else,  discovered  the  fact 
that  a  system  of  kinship  through  mothers  only, 
had  anciently  everywhere  prevailed  before  the  tie 
of  blood  between  father  and  child  had  found  a 
place  in  systems  of  relationships.  And  the  honour 
of  that  discovery,  the  importance  of  which,  as 
affording  a  new  starting-point  for  all  history,  can- 
not be  overestimated,  must  without  stint  or  qual- 
ification be  assigned  to  him."  ^  Such  ar?  the  gen- 
erous words  of  the  late  John  Ferguson  McLennan, 
who  had  no  knowledge  of  Bachofen's  work  when 
his  own  treatise  on  "  Primitive  Marriage "  was 
published  in  1865.  Since  he  was  so  modest  in  urg- 
ing his  own  claims,  it  is  due  to  the  Scotch  lawyer's 
memory  to  say  that,  while  he  was  inferior  in  jioint 
of  erudition  to  the  Swiss  professor,  his  book  is  char- 
acterized by  greater  sagacity,  goes  more  primitive 
directly  to  the  mark,  and  is  le?  encum-  "^''"'^«"- 
bered  by  visionary  speculations  of  doubtful  value.^ 
Mr.  McLennan  proved,  from  evidence  collected 
chiefly  from  Australians  and  South  Sea  Islanders, 
and  sundry  non-Aryan  tribes  of  Hindustan  and 
Thibet,  that  systems  of  kinship  in  which  the  father 
is  ignored  exist  to-<lay,  and  he  furthermore  discov- 
ered unmistakable  and  very  significant  traces  of  the 
former  existence  of  such  a  state  of  things  among 
the  Mongols,  the  Greeks  and  Phoenicians,  and  the 
ancient  Hebrews.     By  those  who  were  inclined  to 

^  MeLennan's  Studies  in  Ancient  History, comprising  a  reprint  of 
Primitive  Marriage,  etc.     London,  1870,  p.  421. 

-  Tliere  is  much  that  is  unsound  in  it,  however,  as  is  often 
inevitably  the  case  with  books  that  strike  boldly  into  a  new  field 
of  inquiry. 


66 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


4/1 


'  ■    [    i:l 


'  fill 


regard  Sir  Henry  Maine's  views  as  final,  it  was 
argued  that  Mr.  McLennan's  facts  were  of  a  spo- 
radic and  exceptional  character.  But  when  the 
evidence  from  tliis  vast  archaic  world  of  America 
began  to  be  gathered  in  and  interpreted  by  Mr. 
Morgan,  this  argument  fell  to  the  ground,  and  as  to 
the  point  chiefly  in  contention,  Mr.  McLennan  was 
proved  to  be  right.     Throughout  abo- 

The  system  of       .    .       ^       •  .  ,,■,  , 

reckoning        rigmal   Amcrica,  with   one   or  two  ex- 
through  ceptions,  kinship  was  reckoned  through 

females  only.      „  ,  ,  i    •      .  i  .  •         i    • 

lemales  only,  and  in  the  excejjtional  in- 
stances the  vestiges  of  that  system  were  so  promi- 
nent as  to  make  it  clear  that  the  change  had  been 
but  recently  effected.  During  the  past  fifteen 
years,  evidence  has  accumulated  from  various 
parts  of  the  world,  until  it  is  beginning  to  appear 
as  if  it  were  the  patriarchal  system  that  is  excep- 
tional, having  been  reached  only  by  the  highest 
races.^    Sir  Henry  Maine's  work  has  lost  none  of 


^  A  general  view  of  the  subject  may  be  obtained  from  the  fol- 
lowing works:  Bachofen,  Das  Mutterrecht,  Stuttgart,  1871^ 
and  Die  Sage  von  Tanaquil,  Heidelberg,  1870;  McLennan's  Stud- 
ies in  Ancient  History,  London,  1876,  and  The  Patriarchal 
Theory,  London,  1884;  Morgan's  Systems  of  Consanguinity 
(Smithsonian  Contributions  to  Knowledge,  vol.  xvii.),  Washing- 
ton, 1871,  and  Ancient  Society,  New  York,  1877;  Robertson 
Smith,  Kinship  and  Marriayt  in  Early  Arabia,  Cambridge,  Eng., 
1885 ;  Lubbock,  Origin  of  Civilization,  5th  ed.,  London,  1889 ; 
Giraud-Teulon,  La  Mere  chez  certains  peuples  de  I'antiquiti,  Paris, 
1867,  and  Les  Origines  de  la  Famille.  Geneva,  1874 ;  Starcke  (of 
Copenhagen),  The  Primitive  Family,  London,  1889.  Some  criti- 
cisms upon  McLennan  and  Morgan  may  be  found  in  Maine's  later 
works,  Early  History  of  Institutions,  London,  1875,  and  Early 
Law  and  Custom,  London,  1883.  By  far  the  ablest  critical  survey 
of  the  whole  field  is  that  in  Spencer's  Principles  of  Sociology,  voL 
L  pp.  621-797. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


57 


its  value,  only,  like  all  human  work,  it  is  not  final ; 
it  needs  to  be  supplemented  by  the  further  study 
of  savagery  as  best  exemplified  in  Australia  and 
some  parts  of  Polynesia,  and  of  barbarism  as  best 
exemplified  in  America.  The  subject  is,  more- 
over, one  of  great  and  complicated  difficulty,  and 
leads  incidentally  to  many  questions  for  solving 
which  the  data  at  our  command  are  still  inade- 
quate. It  is  enough  for  us  now  to  observe  in 
general  that  while  there  are  plenty  of  instances 
of  change  from  the  system  of  reckoning  kinship 
only  through  females,  to  the  system  of  reckoning 
through  males,  there  do  not  appear  to  have  been 
any  instances  of  change  in  the  reverse  direction ; 
and  that  in  ancient  America  the  earlier  system 
was  prevalent. 

If  now  we  ask  the  reason  for  such  a  system  of 
reckoning  kinship  and  inheritance,  so  strange  ac- 
cording to  all  our  modern  notions,  the  true  answer 
doubtless  is  that  which  was  given  by 
prudent  (Trerri'v/Aevos)  Telemachus  to  the  so/for  the*" 
goddess  Athene  when  she  asked  him  to  '^*  ^ 
tell  her  truly  if  he  was  the  son  of  Odysseus :  — 
"  My  mother  says  I  am  his  son,  for  my  part,  I 
don't  know ;  one  never  knows  of  one's  self  who  one's 
father  is."  ^     Already,  no  doubt,  in  Homer's  time 

1      "AW  6.yf  fioi  rd'Se  flirt  koI  irpeK^ws  KariXf^ov^ 
(I  S^  i^  avToTo  rSaos  irais  fh  'OSvarjos. 
alvus  ykp  K«pa\'fiv  re  Kal  6fiuaTa  Ka\h  KotKM 
Kflvcfi,  iirel  Oafxh  toTov  ifjn(ry6ft.fff  aW-fiKoiaiv, 
irplv  ye  i  hv  is  Tpolriv  d^/ajS^juecai,  cj/fla  irep  HWot 
'Apyeiwv  ot  Hpiaroi  ifiav  koIKtis  iirX  vi^valv' 
^     iK  Tov  5"  oCt"  '05i/(r^a  iy^v  tiov  o6r'  ifxk  Ktivos. 
TV  8'  aS  TiiKinaxoi  ircirfv/icVus  iunlov  ))1^8« 


1 


I' I 


ill 

If 

■ik. 


■HII  I 


68 


TUE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


there  was  a  gleam  of  satire  about  this  answer,  such 
as  it  would  show  on  a  modern  page  ;  but  in  more 
primitive  times  it  was  a  very  serious  affair.  From 
what  we  know  of  the  ideas  and  practices  of  unciv- 
ilized tribes  all  over  the  world,  it  is  evident  that 
the  sacredness  of  the  family  based  upon  indissolu- 
ble marriage  is  a  thing  of  comparatively  modern 
growth.  If  the  sexual  relations  of  the  Austra- 
lians, as  observed  to-day,^  are  an  improvement 
upon  an  antecedent  state  of  things,  that  antece- 
The  primeval  dcut  State  must  have  been  sheer  pro- 
humaii  horde,  jjij^cuity.  There  is  ample  warrant  for 
supposing,  with  Mr.  McLennan,  that  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  lower  status  of  savagery,  long  since 
everywhere  extinct,  the  family  had  not  made  itself 
distinctly  visible,  but  men  lived  in  a  horde  very 
much  like  gregarious  brutes.^     I  have  shown  that 

Toiyiip  iyd  rot,  ^eTve,  fidK'  lirpfK^us  i-yopeiffw. 
/J.'flTrip  fiiv  T*  ijxi  <^i]cn  toC  f/x/jLevai,  ai/rap  iywyt 
ovK  oI5'  •  oil  ydp  ir<t»  ris  ihv  y6vov  avrhs  aveyvu, 

Odyssey,  i.  206. 

*  Lumholtz,  Among  Cannibals,  p.  213 ;  Lubbock,  Origin  of 
Civilization,  p.  107 ;  Morgan,  Ancient  Society,  part  iii.,  chap.  iii. 
"  After  battle  it  frequently  happens  among  the  native  tribes  of 
Australia  that  the  wives  of  the  conquered,  of  their  own  free-will, 
go  over  to  the  victors ;  reminding  us  of  the  lioness  which,  quietly 
watching  the  fight  between  two  lions,  goes  o£E  with  the  con- 
queror."    Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology,  vol.  i.  p.  G32. 

^  The  notion  of  the  descent  of  the  human  race  from  a  single 
"pair,"  or  of  different  races  from  different  "  pairs,"  is  a  curious 
instance  of  transferring  modern  institutions  into  times  primeval. 
Of  course  the  idea  is  absurd.  When  the  elder  Agassiz  so  em- 
phatically declared  that  "  pines  have  originated  in  forests,  heaths 
in  heaths,  grasses  in  prairies,  bees  in  hives,  herrings  in  shoals, 
buffaloes  in  herds,  men  in  nations  "  {Essay  on  Classijlration,  Lon- 
don, 1859,  p.  58),  he  made,  indeed,  a  mistake  cf  tlie  same  sort, 


m\ 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  -    50 

the  essential  difference  between  this  primeval  hu- 
man horde  and  a  mere  herd  of  brutes  consisted  in 
the  fact  that  the  gradual  but  very  great  prolon- 
gation of  infancy  had  produced  two  effects :  the 
lengthening  of  the  care  of  children  tended  to  dif- 
ferentiate the  horde  into  family-groups,  and  the 
lengthening  of  the  period  of  youthful  mental  plas- 
ticity made  it  more  possible  for  a  new  generation 
to  improve  upon  the  ideas  and  customs  of  its  pre- 
decessors.^ In  these  two  concomitant  processes 
—  the  development  of  the  family  and  the  increase 
of  mental  plasticity,  or  ability  to  adopt  new  meth- 
o  is  and  strike  out  into  new  ;.aths  of  thought  —  lies 
the  whole  explanation  of  the  moral  and  intellectual 
superiority  of  men  over  dumb  animals.  But  in 
each  case  the  change  was  very  gradual.^  The  true 
savage  is  only  a  little  less  unteachable  than  the 
beasts  of  the  field.  The  savage  family  is  at  first 
barely  discernible  amid  the  primitive  social  chaos 

so  far  as  concerns  the  origin  of  Man,  for  the  nation  is  a  still  more 
modem  institution  than  the  family  ;  but  in  the  other  items  of  his 
statement  he  was  right,  and  as  regards  the  human  race  he  was 
thinking  in  the  right  direction  when  he  placed  multitude  instead 
of  duality  at  the  beginning.  If  instead  of  that  extremely  com- 
plex and  highly  organized  multitude  called  "  nation  "  (in  the  plu- 
ral), he  had  started  with  the  extremely  simple  and  almost  unor- 
ganized multitude  called  "horde"  (in  the  singular),  the  state- 
ment for  Man  would  have  been  correct.  Such  views  were  hardly 
within  the  reach  of  science  thirty  years  ago. 

^  Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  part  ii.,  chaps,  xvi.,  xxi.,  xxii. ; 
Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,  pp.  .306-319;  Darwinism,  and  other 
Essays,  pp.  40-49;   The  Destiny  of  Man,  §§  iii.-ix. 

^  The  slowness  of  the  development  has  apparently  been  such 
as  befits  the  transcendent  value  of  the  result.  Though  the  ques- 
tion is  confessedly  beyond  the  reach  of  science,  may  we  not  hold 
that  civilized  man,  the  creature  of  an  infinite  past,  is  the  child  of 
eternity,  maturing  for  an  inheritance  of  immortal  life  ? 


™ 


!'■  * 


i. 


'<  '! 

J! 


ii 


MS  W 

:|iP 


lt!l 


60 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA, 


in  which  it  had  its  origin.  Along  with  polyandry 
and  polygyny  in  various  degrees  and  forms,  in- 
stances of  exclusiv^e  pairing,  of  at  least  a  tempo- 
rary character,  are  to  be  found  among  the  lowest 
existing  savages,  and  there  are  reasons 

Earliest  fan-       «  •  ji      i  i  i  i 

Uv-group :  the  for  supposiug  that  such  may  have  been 
the  case  even  in  primeval  times.  But 
it  was  impossible  for  strict  monogamy  to  flourish 
in  the  ruder  stages  of  social  development ;  and 
the  kind  of  family-group  that  was  first  clearly 
and  permanently  differentiated  from  the  primeval 
horde  was  not  at  all  like  what  civilized  peophi 
woidd  recognize  as  a  family.  It  was  the  gens  or 
clan,  as  we  find  it  exemplified  in  all  stages  from 
the  middle  period  of  savagery  to  the  middle  pe-' 
riod  of  barbarism.  The  gens  or  clan  was  simply 
- —  to  define  it  by  a  third  synonym  —  the  kin  ;  it 
was  originally  a  group  of  males  and  females  who 
were  traditionally  aware  of  their  common  descent 
reckoned  in  the  female  line.  At  this 
stage  of  development  there  was  quite 
generally  though  not  imiversally  prevalent  the  cus- 
tom of  "  exogamy,"  by  which  a  man  was  forbid- 
den to  marry  a  woman  of  his  own  clan.  Among, 
such  Australian  tribes  as  have  been  studied,  this 
primitive  restriction  upon  promiscuity  seems  to  be 
about  the  only  one. 

Throughout  all  the  earlier  stages  of  culture, 
and  even  into  the  civilized  period,  we  find  society 
organized  with  the  clan  for  its  ultimate  unit,  al- 
though in  course  of  time  its  character  becomes 
greatly  altered  by  the  substitution  of  kinship  in 
the  paternal,  for  that  in  the  maternal  line.    By 


i4 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  61 

long-continued  growth  and  repeated  segmentation 
the  primitive  clan  was  developed  into  a  Phratryand 
more  complex  structure,  in  which  a  *'"^' 
group  of  clans  constituted  a  phratry  or  brother- 
hood, and  a  group  of  phratries  constituted  a  tribe. 
This  threefold  grouping  is  found  so  commonly  in 
all  parts  of  the  world  as  to  afford  good  ground 
for  the  belief  that  it  has  been  universal.  It  was 
long  ago  familiar  to  historians  in  the  case  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  and  of  our  Teutonic  forefathers,^ 
but  it  also  existed  generally  in  ancient  America, 
and  many  obscure  points  connected  with  the  his- 
tory of  the  Greek  and  Roman  groups  have  been 
elucidated  through  the  study  of  Iroquois  and  Al- 
gonquin institutions*  Along  with  the  likenesses, 
however,  there  are  numerous  unlikenesses,  due  to 
the  change  of  kinship,  among  the  European 
groups,  from  the  female  line  to  the  male. 

This  change,  as  it  occurred  among  Aryan  and 
Semitic  peoples,  marked  one  of  the  most  momen- 
tous revolutions  in  the  history  of  mankind.  It 
probably  occurred  early  in  the  upper  period  of 
barbarism,  or  late  in  the  middle  period,  after  the 
long-continued  domestication  of  animals  had  re- 
sulted in  the  acquisition  of  private  property  (pe- 
cw.s,  peculium^  pecunia)  in  large  amounts  by  in- 
dividuals.    In  primitive    society  there 

, .     ,  ,  Effect  of  pas- 

was  very  little   personal   property  ex-  torai  life  upon 

.  1    .1  •  /-         V  •-     property  and 

cept  m  weapons,  clothmg  (such  as  it  upon  the  fam- 
was),  and  trinkets.    Real  estate  was  un- 
known.    Land  was  simply  occupied  by  the  tribe. 
There  was  general  communism  and  social  equal- 

^  The  Teutonic  hundred  and  Roman  curia  answered  to  the 
Qreekphratry. 


62 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


'(■■ 


I  w 


r  ! 


1   . 
* 


vm% 


ity.  In  the  Old  World  the  earliest  instance  of 
extensive  "  adverse  possession  "  on  the  part  of  in- 
dividuals, as  against  other  individuals  in  the  clan- 
community,  was  the  possession  of  flock.s  and  herds. 
Distinctions  in  wealth  and  rank  were  thus  inaugu- 
rated ;  slavery  began  to  be  profitable  and  personal 
retainers  and  adherents  useful  in  new  ways.  As 
in  earlier  stages  the  community  in  marital  rela- 
tions had  been  part  of  the  general  community  in 
possessions,  so  now  the  exclusive  possession  of  a 
wife  or  wives  was  part  of  the  system  of  private 
property  that  was  coming  into  vogue.  The  man 
of  many  cattle,  the  man  who  could  attach  subor- 
dinates to  him  through  motives  of  self-interest  as 
well  as  personal  deference,  the  man  who  could  de- 
fend his  property  against  robbers,  covdd  also  Ijave 
his  separate  household  and  maintain  its  sanctity. 
In  this  way,  it  is  believed,  indissoluble  marriage, 
in  its  two  forms  of  monogamy  and  polygamy, 
originated.  That  it  had  already  existed  sporadi- 
cally is  not  denied,  but  it  now  acquired  such  sta- 
bility and  permanence  that  the  older  and  looser 
forms  of  alliance,  hitherto  prevalent,  fell  into  dis- 
favour. A  natural  result  of  the  growth  of  private 
wealth  and  the  permanence  of  the  marital  rela- 
tion was  the  change  in  reckoning  kinship  from  the 
maternal  to  the  pateriial  line.  This  change  was 
probably  favoured  by  the  prevalence  of  polygamy 
among  those  who  were  coming  to  be  distinguished 
as  "upper  classes,"  since  a  large  family  of  chil- 
dren by  different  mothers  could  be  held  together 
only  by  reckoning  the  kinship  through  the  father. 
Thus,  we  may  suppose,  originated  the  patriarchal 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  98 

family.  Even  in  its  rudest  form  it  was  an  im- 
mense improvement  upon  wliat  had  gone  before, 
and  to  the  stronger  and  higlier  social  organization 
thus  acquired  we  must  largely  asoriba  the  rise  of 
the  Aryan  and  Semitic  peoples  to  the  foremost 
rank  of  civilization.^ 

It  is  not  intended  to  imply  that  there  is  no 
other  way  in  which  the  change  to  the  male  line 
may  have  been  brought  about  among  other  peo- 
ples. The  explanation  just  given  applies  very 
well  to  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  peoples,  but  it  is 
inapplicable  to  the  state  of  things  which  seems  to 
have  existed  in  Mexico  at  the  time  of  the  Dis- 
covery .^  The  subject  is  a  difficidt  one,  and  some- 
times confronts  us  with  questions  much  easier  to 
ask  than  to  answer.  The  change  has  been  ob- 
served among  tribes  in  a  ^ower  stage  than  that 
just  described.^  On  the  other  hand,  as  old  cus- 
toms die  hard,  no  doubt  inheritance  has  in  many 
places  continued  in  the  maternal  line  long  after 
paternity  is  fully  known.  Symmetrical  regularity 
in  the  development  of  human  institutions  has  by 
no  means  been  the  rule,  and  there  is  often  much 
difficulty  in  explaining  particular  cases,  even  when 
the  direction  of  the  general  drift  can  be  discerned. 

^  Fenton's  Early  Ilehrnv  Life,  London,  1880,  is  an  interesting 
studj  of  the  upper  period  of  barbarism ;  see  also  Spencer,  Prin- 
cip.  of  Social.,  i.  724-737. 

^  See  below,  p.  122. 

*  As  among  the  Hervey  Islanders ;  Gill,  Myths  and  Songs  of  the 
South  Pacific,  p.  3(5.  Sir  John  Lubbock  would  account  for  the 
curious  and  widely  spread  custom  of  the  Couvade  as  a  feature  of 
this  change.  Origin  of  Civilization,  pp.  14-17,  159 ;  of.  Tyler, 
Early  Hist,  of  Mankind,  pp.  288,  297. 


ii 


64 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


In  aboriginal  America,  as  already  observed, 
kinship  through  females  only  was  the  rule,  and 
The  exoga-  exogamy  was  strictly  enforced,  —  the 
."JTdeut  Am"r-  "^'^^  must  be  taken  from  a  different 
'''*•  clan.      Indissoluble  marriage,  whether 

monogamous  or  polygamous,  seems  to  have  been 
unknown.  The  marriage  relation  was  terminable 
at  the  will  of  either  party.^  The  abiding  unit 
upon  which  the  ■  social  structure  was  founded  was 
not  the  family  but  the  exogamous  clan. 


'■  \ 


i     f 
i   i 


T  I     ! 


I  have  been  at  some  pains  to  elucidate  this 
point  because  the  house -life  of  the  American 
aborigines  found  visible,  and  in  some  instances 
very  durable,  expression  in  a  remarkable  style  of 
house-architecture.  The  manner  in  which  the  In- 
dians built  their  houses  grew  directly  out  of  the 
requirements  of  their  life.  It  was  an  unmistak- 
ably characteristic  architecture,  and  while  it  ex- 

^  "  There  is  no  embarrassment  growing  out  of  problems  re- 
specting the  woman's  future  support,  the  division  of  property,  or 
the  adjustment  of  claims  for  the  possession  of  the  children.  The 
independent  self-support  of  every  adult  healthy  Indian,  male  or 
female,  and  the  gentile  relationship,  which  is  more  wide-reaching 
and  authoritative  than  that  of  marriage,  have  already  disposed  of 
these  questions,  which  are  usually  so  perplexing  for  the  white 
man.  So  far  as  personal  maintenance  is  concerned,  a  woman  is, 
as  a  rule,  just  as  well  off  without  a  husband  as  with  one.  What 
is  hers,  in  the  shape  of  property,  remains  her  own  whether  she  is 
married  or  not.  In  fact,  marriage  among  these  Indians  seems  to 
be  but  the  natural  mating  of  the  sexes,  to  cease  at  the  option  of 
either  of  the  interested  parties."  Clay  MacCauIey,  "  The  ISemi- 
nole  Indians  of  Florida,"  in  Fifth  Annual  Report  of  the  Bureau  of 
Ethnology,  Washington,  1887,  p.  407.  For  a  graphic  account  of 
the  state  of  things  among  the  Cheyennes  and  Arrapahos,  see 
Dodge,  Our  Wild  Indians,  pp.  204-220. 


J  . 


■1  i 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


65 


hibits  manifold  unlikenesses  in  detail,  due  to  dif- 
ferences  in  intelligence  as  well  as  to 

Intimate  con- 

the  presence  or  absence  of  sundry  ma-  nectionofab- 

.    *  .  ...      original  archi- 

terials,  there  is  one  underlyins;  princi-  tecturewith 
pie  always  manifest.  That  underlying 
j)rinciple  is  adaptation  to  a  certain  mode  of  com- 
munal living  such  as  all  American  aborigines  that 
have  been  carefully  studied  are  known  to  have 
practised.  Through  many  gradations,  from  the 
sty  of  the  California  savage  up  to  the  noble  sculp- 
tured ruins  of  Uxmal  and  Chichen-Itza,  the  prin- 
ciple is  always  present.  Taken  in  connection  with 
evidence  from  other  sources,  it  enables  us  to  ex- 
hibit a  gradation  of  stages  of  culture  in  aboriginal 
North  America,  with  the  savages  of  the  Sacra- 
mento and  Columbia  valleys  at  the  bottom,  and  the 
Mayas  of  Yucatan  at  the  top  ;  and  while  in  going 
from  one  end  to  the  other  a  very  long  interval  was 
traversed,  we  feel  that  the  progTess  of  the  abori- 
gines in  crossing  that  interval  was  made  along 
similar  lines.^ 

The  principle  was  first  studied  and  explained  by 
Mr.  Morgan  in  the  case  of  the  famous  "long 
houses  "  of  the  Iroquois.  "  The  long  house  .  .  . 
was  from  fifty  to  eighty  and  sometimes  one  hun- 
dred feet  long.  It  consisted  of  a  strong  frame 
of  upright  poles  set  in  the  groimd,  which  was 
strengthened  with  horizontal  poles  attached  with 
withes,  and  surmounted  with  a  triangidar,  and  in 
some  cases  with  a  round  roof.    It  was  covered  over, 

^  See  Morgan's  Houses  and  House-Life  of  the  American  Abori- 
gines, Washing'ton,  1881,  an  epoch-making  book  of  rare  and  ab- 
sorbing intere3t. 


#1- 


■MmjiiltimAfU  > 


66 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


I  '  f 


rf 


both  sides  and  roof,  with  long  strips  of  ehn  bark 
tied  to  the  frame  with  strings  or  splints.     An  ex- 


Seneca-Iroquois  long  house. 

temal  frame  of  poles  for  the  sides  and  of  rafters 

The  Ion  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^^  Were  then  adjusted  to  hold 

houses  of  the  the   bark  shingles   between   them,  the 

Iroquois.  "  ' 

two  frames  being  tied  together.     The 
interior  of  the  house  was  comparted  ^  at  intervals 


96  n 


Ground-plan  of  long  house. 

of  six  or  eight  feet,  leaving  each  chamber  entirely 
open  like  a  stall  upon  the  passageway  which 
passed  through  the  centre  of  the  house  from  end 
to  end.  At  each  end  was  a  doorway  covered  with 
suspended  skins.  Between  each  four  apartments, 
two  on  a  side,  was  a  fire-pit  in  the  centre  of  the 
hail,  used  ii.  omnion  by  their  occupants.  Thus  a 
house  with  five  fiifes  would  contain  twenty  aptirt- 

^  This  verb  of  Mr.  Morgan's  at  first  struck  me  as  odd,  but 
though  rarely  used,  it  is  supported  by  good  authority ;  see  Cen- 
tury Dictionary,  a.  v. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  67 

ments  and  accommodate  twenty  families,  unless 
some  apartments  were  reserved  for  storage.  They 
were  warm,  roomy,  and  tidily-kept  habitations. 
Raised  bunks  were  constructed  around  the  walls 
of  each  apartment  for  beds.  From  the  roof -poles 
were  suspended  their  strings  of  corn  in  the  ear, 
braided  by  the  husks,  also  strings  of  dried  squashes 
and  pumpkins.  Spaces  were  contrived  here  and 
there  to  store  away  their  accumulations  of  provi- 
sions. Each  house,  as  a  rule,  was  occupied  by  re- 
lated families,  the  mothers  and  their  children  be- 
longing to  the  same  gens,  while  their  husbands 
and  the  fathers  of  these  children  belonged  to  other 
gentes ;  consequently  the  gens  or  clan  of  the 
mother  largely  predominated  in  the  household. 
Whatever  was  taken  in  the  hunt  or  raised  by  cul- 
tivation by  any  member  of  the  household  .  .  . 
was  for  the  common  benefit.  Provisions  were 
made  a  common  stock  within  the  household."  ^ 

"  Over  every  such  household  a  matron  presided^, 
whose  duty  it  was  to  supervise  its  domestic  econ- 
omy. After  the  single  daily  meal  had  been  cooked 
at  the  different  fires  within  the  house,  it  was  her 
province  to  divide  the  food  from  the  kettle  to  the 
several  families  according  to  their  respective  needs. 
What  remained  was  placed  in  the  custody  of  an- 
other person  until  she  again  required  it."  ^ 

^  The  Iroquois  ceased  to  build  such  houses  before  the  bepfin- 
ning  of  the  present  century.  I  quote  Mr.  Morg^au's  description 
at  len<]^th,  because  his  book  is  out  of  print  and  liard  to  obtain. 
It  oug'lit  to  be  republished,  and  in  octavo,  like  his  Ancient  So' 
cieti/,oi  wliich  it  is  a  continuation. 

*  Lucien  Carr,  "  On  the  Social  and  Political  Position  of  Woman 
among  the  Huron-Iroquois  Tribes,"  Reports  of  Peabody  Museum, 
vol.  iii.  p.  215. 


.11 


11 


It.  I  I 


', 


m 


•1  .' 

i 

t  ^: 
i 


!!} 

1:1 

'11 


ii 


ill 

■M 


8 


68 


E  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Stmunary 
divorce. 


Not  only  the  food  was  common  property,  "but 
many  chattels,  including  the  children,  belonged  to 
the  gens  oj*  clan.  Wlwai  a  young  woman  got  mar- 
ried she  brought  her  husband  home  with  her. 
Though  thenceforth  an  inmate  of  this  household 
he  remained  an  alien  to  her  clan.  "  K  he  proved 
lazy  and  failed  to  do  his  share  of  the  providing, 
woe  be  to  him.  No  matter  how  many  children,  or 
whatever  goods  he  might  have  in  the  house,  he 
might  at  any  time  be  ordered  to  pick 
up  his  blanket  and  budge ;  and  after 
such  orders  it  would  not  be  healthful  for  him  to 
disobey ;  the  house  would  be  too  hot  for  him ;  and 
unless  saved  by  the  intercession  of  some  aunt  or 
grandmother  [of  his  wife]  he  must  retreat  to  his 
own  clan,  or,  as  was  often  done,  go  and  start  a 
new  matrimonial  alliance  in  some  other.  .  .  .  The 
female  portion  ruled  the  house."  ^ 

Though  there  was  but  one  fresldy-cooked  meal, 
taken  about  the  middle  of  the  day,  any  member  of 
the  household  when  hungry  coidd  be  helped  from 
the  common  stock.  Hospitality  was  universal.  If 
a  person  from  one  of  the  other  communal  house- 
holds, or  a  stranger  from  another  tribe  (in  time  of 
peace),  were  to  visit  the  house,  the  women  woidd 
immediately  offer  him  food,  and  it  was 
a  breach  of  etiquette  to  decline  to  eat  it. 
This  custom  was  strictly  observed  all  over  the 
continent  and  in  the  West  India  Islands,  and  was 
often  remarked  upon  by  the  early  discoverers,  in 

^  This  W.1S  not  incompatible  with  tlie  subjection  of  women  to 
extreme  drudgery  and  ill-treatniPTit.  For  an  instructive  compari- 
son with  the  case  among  the  tribes  of  the  Far  West,  see  Dodge, 
Our  Wild  Indians,  chap.  xvi. 


Hospitality. 


i 

i 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


69 


whose  minds  it  was  apt  to  implant  idyllic  notions 
that  were  afterward  rudely  disturbed.  The  prev- 
alence of  hospitality  among  uncivilized  races  has 
long  been  noted  by  travellers,  and  is  probably  in 
most  cases,  as  it  certainly  was  in  ancient  America, 
closely  connected  with  communism  in  living. 

The  clan,  which  practised  this  communism,  had 
its  definite  organization,  officers,  rights,  and  duties. 
Its  official  head  was  the  "sachem,"  whose  func- 
tions were  of  a  civil  nature.  The  sachem  was 
elected  by  the  clan  and  must  be  a  member  of  it, 
so  that  a  son  could  not  be  chosen  to  succeed  his 
father,  but  a  sachem  coidd  be  succeeded  structure  of 
by  his  uterine  brother  or  by  his  sister's  *^'®  ''^'^" 
son,  and  in  this  way  customary  lines  of  succession 
could  and  often  did  tend  to  become  established. 
The  clan  also  elected  its  "  chiefs,"  whose  functions 
were  military ;  the  number  of  chiefs  was  propor- 
tionate to  that  of  the  people  composing  the  clan, 
usually  one  chief  to  every  fifty  or  sixty  persons. 
The  clan  could  depose  its  sachem  or  any  of  its 
chiefs.  Personal  property,  such  as  weapons,  or 
trophies,  or  rights  of  user  in  the  garden-plots,  was 
inheritable  in  the  female  line,  and  thus  stayed 
within  the  clan.  The  members  were  reciprocally 
bound  to  help,  defend,  and  avenge  one  another. 
Tlie  clan  had  the  right  of  adopting  strangers  to 
strengthen  itself.  It  had  the  right  of  naming  its 
members,  and  these  names  were  always  obviously 
significant,  like  Little  Turtle,  Yellow  Wolf,  etc. ; 
of  names  like  our  Richard  or  AVilliam,  with  the 
meaning  lost,  or  obvious  only  to  scholars,  i^o  trace 
is  to  be  found  in  aboriginal  America.     The  clan 


70 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


)!;' 


:  i 


li  ? 


Ill 


JJ  . 


itself,  too,  always  had  a  name,  which  was  usually 
that  of  some  animal,  —  as  ^Volf ,  Eagle,  or  Salmon, 
and  a  rude  drawing  or  pictograph  of  the  creature 
served  as  a  "totem"  or  primitive  heraldic  device. 
A  mythological  meaning  was  attached  to  this  eni- 
Ijiem.  The  clan  liad  its  own  common  religious 
rites  and  common  burial  place.  There  was  a  clan- 
council,  of  which  women  might  be  members ;  there 
were  instances,  indeed,  of  its  being  composed  en- 
tirely of  women,  whose  position  was  one  of  much 
move  dignity  and  influence  than  has  commonly 
been  supposed.  Instances  of  squaw  sachems  were 
not  so  very  rare.^ 

The  number  of  clans  in  a  tribe  naturally  bore 
some  proportion  to  the  pojiulousness  of  the  tribe, 
varying  from  three,  in  the  case  of  the  Delawares, 
to  twenty  or  more,  aL  in  the  case  of  the  Ojibwas 
and  Creeks.  There  were  usually  eight  or  ten,  and 
these  were  usually  grouped  into  two  or  three  phra- 
tries.  The  phratry  seems  to  have  origi- 
nated in  the  segmentation  of  the  over- 
grown clan,  for  in  some  cases  exogamy 
was  originally  practised  as  between  the  phratries 
and  afterward  the  custom  died  out  while  it  was 
retained  as  between  their  constituent  clans.^     The 


Origin  and 
structure  of 
the  pbratry. 


1:1 


^  Among  the  Wyandots  there  is  in  each  clan  a  council  com- 
posed of  four  squaws,  and  this  council  elects  the  male  sachem  who 
is  its  head.  Therefore  the  trihal  council,  which  is  the  aggregate 
of  the  clan-councils,  consists  one  fifth  of  men  and  four  fifths  of 
women.  See  Powell,  "  Wyandot  Government :  a  Short  Study  of 
Tribal  Society,"  in  First  Anriual  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnol- 
^9yi  Washington,  1881,  pp.  59-09  ;  and  also  Mr.  Oarr's  interesting 
essay  above  cited. 

^  H.  H.  Bancroft,  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  States,  vol.  i.  p. 
109. 


rJ' 


,1; 


I 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  71 

system  of  naming  often  indicates  this  origin  of 
the  phratry,  though  seklom  quite  so  forcibly  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Mo-iegan  tribe,  which  was  thus 
com230sed :  ^  — 

I.  Wolf  Phratry. 
Clans :  1.  Wolf,  2.  Bear,    3.  Dog,  4.  Opossum. 

II.  Turtle  Phratry. 

Clans :  5.  Little  Turtle,   6.  Mud  Turtle,   7.  Great 

Turtle,  8.  Yellow  Eel. 

ni.  Turkey  Phratry. 
Clans:  9.  Turkey,     10.  Crane,     11.  Chicken. 

Here  the  senior  clan  in  the  phratry  tends  to  keep 
the  original  clan-name,  while  the  junior  clans  have 
been  guided  by  a  sense  of  kinship  in  choosing  their 
new  names.  This  origin  of  the  phratry  is  further 
indicated  by  the  fact  that  the  phratry  does  not  al- 
ways occur ;  sometimes  the  clans  are  organized  di- 
rectly into  the  tribe.  The  phratry  was  not  so  much 
a  governmental  as  a  religious  and  social  organiza- 
tion. Its  most  important  function  seems  to  have 
been  supplementing  or  reinforcing  the  action  of  the 
single  clan  in  exacting  compensation  for  murder ; 
and  this  point  is  full  of  interest  because  it  helps  us 
to  understand  how  among  our  Teutonic  forefathers 
the  "hundred"  (the  equivalent  of  the  phratry) 
became  charged  with  the  duty  of  prosecuting 
criminals.  The  Greek  phratry  had  a  precisely 
analogous  fmiction.^ 

^  Morgan,  Houses  and  House-Life,  p.  16. 

'■^  See  Freeman,  Comparative  JPolitics,  p.  117 ;  Stubbs,  Const. 


imF" 


'It 


f 


it'r 


« 


■  •:, 


f  : 


1.1 '  ■ 


72 


T/f^  PISCOVFRY  OF  AMERICA. 


structure  of 
the  tribe. 


The  Indian  tribe  was  a  group  of  people  distin- 
guished by  the  exclusive  possession  of  a  dialect  in 
common.  It  possessed  a  tribal  name  and  occupied 
a  more  or  less  clearly  defined  territory ; 
there  were  also  tribal  religious  rites. 
Its  sujireme  government  was  vested  in  the  council 
of  its  clan-chiefs  and  sachems  ;  and  as  these  were 
thus  officers  of  the  tribe  as  well  as  of  the  clan,  the 
tribe  exercised  the  right  of  investing  them  with 
office,  amid  appropriate  solemni'^^ies,  after  their 
election  by  their  respective  cians.  Tho  tribal- 
council  had  also  the  right  to  depose  chiefs  and 
sachems.  In  some  instances,  not  always,  there 
was  a  head  chief  or  military  commander  for  the 
tribes,  elected  by  the  tribal  council.  Such  was 
the  origin  of  the  office  which,  in  most  societies  of 
the  Old  World,  gradually  multiplied  its  functions 
and  accumulated  power  until  it  developed  into 
true  kingship.  Nowhere  in  ancient  North  America 
did  it  quite  reach  such  a  stage. 

Among  the  greater  part  of  the  aborigines  no 
hierher  form  of  social  structure  was  attained  than 
the  tribe.  There  were,  however,  several  instances 
of  permanent  confederation,  of  which 
the  two  most  interesting  and  most 
highly  developed  were  the  League  of 
the  Iroquois,  mentioned  above,  and  the 
Mexican  Confederacy,  presently  to  be  considered. 
The  principles   upon  which  the    Iroquois  league 


Cross-relation 
ships  between 
chfns  and 
tribes :  the 
Iroquois  Con- 
federacy. 


■ 


Hist.,  vol.  1.  pp.  98-104 ;  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  vol.  iii.  pp.  74, 
88.  It  is  interesting  to  compare  Grote' s  description  with  Mor- 
gan's (.Inc.  Sac,  pp.  71,  04)  and  note  both  the  closeness  of  the 
general  parallelism  and  the  character  of  the  specific  variations. 


ixmi 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  78 

was  founded  have  been  thoroughly  and  minutely 
explained  by  Mr.  Morgan.^  It  originated  in  a 
union  of  five  tribes  composed  of  clans  in  common, 
and  speaking  five  dialects  of  a  common  language. 
These  tribes  had  themselves  arisen  through  the 
segmentation  of  a  single  overgrown  tribe,  so  that 
portions  of  the  original  clans  survived  in  them  all. 
The  Wolf,  Bear,  and  Turtle  clan  were  common  to 
all  the  five  tribes ;  tlu'ee  other  clans' were  common 
to  three  of  the  five.  "  All  the  members  of  the 
same  gens  [clan],  whether  Mohawks,  Oneidas, 
Onondr.gas,  Cayugas,  or  Senecas,  were  brothers 
and  sisters  to  each  other  in  virtue  of  their  descent 
from  the  same  common  [female]  ancestor,  and 
ihey  recognized  each  other  as  such  with  the  full- 
est cordiality.  When  they  met,  the  first  inquiry 
was  the  name  of  each  other's  gens,  and  next  the 
immediate  pedigree  of  each  other's  sachems ;  after 
which  they  were  able  to  find,  under  their  peculiar 
system  of  consangainity,  the  relationship  in  which 
they  stood  to  each  other.  .  .  .  This  cross-relation- 
ship between  persons  of  the  same  gens  in  the  dif- 
ferent tribes  is  still  preserved  and  recognized 
among  them  in  all  its  original  force.  It  explains 
the  tenacity  with  which  the  fragments  of  the  old 
confederacy  still  cling  together."  ^    Aclmowledged 

^  In  his  League  of  the  Iroquois,  Rochester,  1851,  a  book  now 
ont  of  print  and  excessively  rare.  A  brief  summary  is  given  in 
his  Ancient  Society,  chap,  v.,  and  in  his  Houses  and  House-Life, 
pp.  23-41.  Mr,  Morgan  was  adopted  into  the  Seneca  tribo,  and 
his  life  work  was  begun  by  a  profound  and  exhaustive  study  of 
this  interesting  people. 

'■^  Rouses  and  House-Life,  p.  33.  At  the  period  of  its  greatest 
power,  about  1075,  the  people  of  the  confederacy  were  about 
25,000  in  number.     In  1875,  according  to  official  statistics  (see 


y^A 


Kli! 


11 


T4 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


consanguinity  is  to  the  barbarian  a  sound  reason, 
and  the  only  one  conceivable,  for  permanent  po- 
litical union  ;  and  the  very  existence  of  such  a 
confederacy  as  that  of  the  Five  Nations  was  ren- 
dered possible  only  through  the  permanence  of 
the  clans  or  communal  households  which  were  its 
ultimate  units.  We  have  here  a  clue  to  the  policy 
of  these  Indians  toward  the  kindred  tribes  who 
refused  to  join  their  league.  These  tribes,  too,  so 
far  as  is  known,  would  seem  to  have  contained  the 
same  clans.  After  a  separation  of  at  least  four 
hundred  years  the  Wyandots  have  still  five  of 
their  eight  clans  in  common  with  the  Iroquois. 
When  the  Eries  and  other  tribes  would  not  join 
the  league  of  their  kindred,  the  refusal  smacked 
of  treason  to  the  kin,  and  we  can  quite  understand 
the  deadly  fury  with  which  the  latter  turned  upon 
them  and  butchered  every  man,  woman,  and  child 
except  such  as  they  saw  fit  to  adopt  into  their  own 
clans. 


''     i      C: 


table  appended  to  Dodge's  Plains  of  the  Great  West,  pp.  441- 
448),  there  were  in  the  state  of  New  York  108  Oneidas,  203 
Onondagas,  105  Cayugas,  3,043  Senecas,  and  448  Tuscaroras,  —  in 
all  4,057.  Besides  these  there  were  1,279  Oneidas  on  a  reservation 
in  Wisconsin,  and  207  Senecas  in  the  Indian  Territory.  Tlie  Mo- 
hawks are  not  mentioned  in  the  list.  During  the  Revolutionary 
War,  and  just  afterward,  the  Mohawks  migrated  into  Upper  Can- 
ada (Ontario),  for  an  account  of  which  the  reader  may  consult 
the  second  volume  of  Stone's  Life  of  Brant.  Portions  of  the 
other  tribes  also  went  to  Canada.  In  New  York  the  Oneidas  and 
Tuscaroras  were  converted  to  Christianity  by  Samuel  Kirkland 
and  witlilield  from  alliance  with  the  British  during  the  Revolu- 
tion ;  the  others  still  retain  their  ancient  religion.  They  are  for 
the  most  part  farmers  and  are  now  increasing  in  numbers.  •  Tlieir 
treatment  by  the  state  of  New  York  has  been  honourably  distin- 
guished for  justice  and  humanity. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  75 

Each  of  the  Five  Tribes  retained  its  local  self- 
government.  The  supreme  government  of  the  con- 
federacy was  vested  in  a  General  Council  of  fifty 
sachems,  "  equal  in  rank  and  authority."  The  fifty 
sachemships  were  created  in  perpetuity  in  certain 
clans  of  the  several  tribes ;  whenever  a  vacancy 
occurred,  it  was  filled  by  the  clan  electing  one  of 
its  own  members ;  a  sachem  once  thus  elected 
could  be  deposed  by  the  clan-council  for 
good  cause ;  "  but  the  right  to  invest  the  confed- 
these  sachems  with  office  was  reserved 
to  the  General  Council."  These  fifty  sachems  of 
the  confederacy  were  likewise  sachems  in  their 
respective  tribes,  "  and  with  the  chiefs  of  these 
tribes  formed  the  council  of  each,  which  was  su- 
preme over  all  matters  pertaining  to  the  tribe  ex- 
clusively." The  General  Council  could  not  con- 
vene itself,  but  could  be  convened  by  any  one  of 
the  five  tribal  councils.  The  regular  meeting  was 
once  a  year  in  tlie  autumn,  in  the  valley  of  Onon- 
daga, but  in  stirring  times  extra  sessions  were  fre- 
quent. The  proceedings  were  opened  by  an  ad- 
dress from  one  of  the  sachems,  "  in  the  course  of 
which  he  thanked  the  Great  Spirit  [i.  e.  loskeha, 
the  sky-god]  for  sparing  their  lives  and  permit- 
ting them  to  meet  together  ;  "  after  this  they  were 
ready  for  business.  It  was  proper  for  any  orator 
from  among  the  people  to  address  the  Council 
with  arguments,  and  the  debates  were  sometimes 
very  long  and  elaborate.  When  it  came  to  vot- 
ing, the  fifty  sachems  voted  by  tribes,  each  tribe 
counting  as  a  unit,  and  unanimity  was  as  impera- 
tive as  in  an  English  jury,  so  that  one  tribe  could 


r1 


76 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


block  tlie  proceedings.  The  confederacy  had  no 
head-sachein,  or  civil  chief-magistrate  ;  but  a  mili- 
tary commander  was  indispensable,  and,  curiously 
enough,  without  being  tauglit  by  the  experience  of 
a  Tarquin,  the  Iroquois  made  this  a  dual  office, 
like  the  Roman  consulship.  There  were  two  per- 
manent chieftainships,  one  in  the  Wolf,  the  other 
in  the  Turtle  clan,  and  both  in  the  Seneca  tribe, 
because  the  western  border  was  the  most  exposed 
to  attack.^  The  chiefs  were  elected  by  the  clan, 
and  inducted  into  office  by  the  General  Council ; 
their  tenure  was  during  life  or  good  behaviour. 
This  office  never  encroached  upon  the  others  in  its 
powers,  but  an  able  warrior  in  this  position  could 
wield  great  influence. 

Such  was  the  famous  confederacy  of  the  Iro- 
quois. They  called  it  the  Long  House,  and  by 
The "  Long  *^"*^  uamc  as  commonly  as  any  other  it 
House."  jg   known   in   history.      The   name   by 

which  they  called  themselves  was  Ilodenosaunee, 
or  "  People  of  the  Long  House."  The  name  was 
picturesquely  descriptive  of  the  long  and  narrow 
strip  of  villages  with  its  western  outlook  toward 
the  Niagara,  and  its  eastern  toward  the  Hudson, 
three  hundred  miles  distant.  But  it  was  appro- 
priate also  for  another  and  a  deeper  reason  than 
this.    We  have  seen  that  in  its  social  and  political 


'■  ■•- 


I  ■' 


^  Somewhat  on  the  same  principle  thai  in  mediaeval  Europe 
led  an  earl  or  count,  commanding  an  exposed  border  district  or 
march  to  rise  in  power  and  importance  and  become  a  "  margrave  " 
[mar^ -f- jr^i/"  =  march-count]  or  "marquis."  Compare  the  in- 
crease of  sovereignty  accorded  to  the  earls  of  Chester  and  bishops 
of  Durham  as  rulers  of  the  two  principal  march  counties  of  Eng- 
land. 


!5  jfi 


*  & 


I!*  r 

f.; 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  T7 

structure,  from  top  to  bottom  and  from  end  to 
end,  the  confederaey  was  based  upon  and  held  to- 
gether by  the  gentes,  clans,  comnuuial  houseliolds, 
or  "  long  houses,"  which  were  its  component  imits. 
They  may  be  compared  to  the  hypothetical  inde- 
structible atoms  of  modern  physics,  whereof  all 
material  objects  are  composed.  The  whole  insti 
tutional  fabric  was  tlie  outgrowth  of  the  group  of 
ideas  and  habits  that  belong  to  a  state  of  society 
ignorant  of  and  incapable  of  imagining  any  other 
form  of  organization  than  the  clan  held  together 
by  the  tie  of  a  common  maternal  ancestry.  The 
house  architecture  was  as  much  a  constituent  part 
of  the  fabric  as  the  council  of  sachems.  There  is 
a  transparency  about  the  system  that  is  very  dif- 
ferent from  the  obscurity  we  continually  find  in 
Europe  and  Asia,  where  different  strata  of  ideas  j 

and  institutions  have  been  superimposed  ore  upon  i 

another  and  crmnpled  and  distorted  with  as  little  ;; 

apparent    significance  or  purpose  as   the  porches  ! 

and  gables  of  a  so-called  "■  Queen  Anne  "  house.^  l 

Conquest  in  the   Old  AYorld  has  resiUted  in  tho  !^ 

commingling   and  manifold   fusion  of  jjeoplos   in  ,  1* 

very  different  stages  of  development.     In  the  New  I 

World  there  has  been  very  little  of  that  sort  of  j 

thing.     Conquest  in  ancient  America  was  pretty 
much   all  of    tJie    Iroquois  type,  entailing  in  its  [ 

milder  form  the  imposition  of  tribute,  in  its  more  j; 

desperate  form  the  extermination  of  a  tribe  with 
the  adoption  of  its  remnants  into  the  similarly- 

'  For  instance,  the  whole  discnssion  3n  Gomme's  Village  Com- 
munity, London,  181)0,  an  excellent  book,  abounds  with  instances 
of  this  crumpling^. 


78 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


-S'l 


-: 


ill 


constituted  tribe  of  the  conquerors.  There  was 
therefore  but  little  modification  of  the  social  struc- 
ture while  the  people,  gradually  acquiring  new 
arts,  were  passing  through  savagery  and  into  a 
more  or  less  advanced  stage  of  barbarism.  The 
symmetry  of  the  structure  and  the  relation  of 
one  institution  to  another  is  thus  distinctly  ap- 
parent. 

The  communal  household  and  the  political  struc- 
ture built  upon  it,  as  above  described  in  the  case 
of  the  Iroquois,  seem  to  have  existed  all  over  an 
cient  North  America,  with  agreement  in  funda- 
mental characteristics  and  variation  in  details  and 
degree  of  development.  There  are  many  corners 
as  yet  imperfectly  explored,  but  hitherto,  in  so  far 
as  research  lias  been  rewarded  with  information,  it 
all  points  in  the  same  general  direction.  Among 
the  tribes  above  enumerated  as  either  in  savagery 
Dr  in  the  lower  status  of  barbarism,  so  far  as  they 
have  been  studied,  there  seems  to  be  a  general 
agreement,  as  to  the  looseness  of  the  marriage 
tie,  the  clan  with  descent  in  the  female  line,  the 
phratry,  the  tribe,  the  officers  and  councils,  the 
social  equality,  the  community  in  goods  (with  ex- 
ceptions already  noted),  and  the  wigwam  or  house 
adapted  to  communal  living. 

The  extreme  of  variation  consistent  with  adher- 
ence to  the  common  principle  was  to  be  found  in 
the  shape  and  material  of  the  houses.  Those  of 
the  savage  tribes  were  but  sorry  huts.  The  long 
house  was  used  by  the  Powhatans  and  other  Al- 
gonquin tribes.  The  other  most  highly  developed 
type    may  be  illustrated  by  the  circular  frame- 


li 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


79 


houses  of  the  Mandans.^  These  houses  were  from 
forty  to  sixty  feet  in  diameter.  A  dozen 
or  more  posts,  each  about  eight  inches  houses  of  the 
m  diameter,  were  set  in  the  ground, 
"  at  equal  distances  in  the  circumference  of  a  cir- 
cle, and  rising  about  six  feet  above  the  level  of 
the  floor."  The  tops  of  the  posts  were  connected 
by  horizontal  stringers;  and  outside  each  post  a 
slanting  wooden  brace  sunk  in  the  ground  about 
four  feet  distant  served  lis  a  firm  support  to  the 
structure.  The  spaces  between  these  braces  were 
filled  by  tall  wooden  slabs,  set  with  the  same 
slant  and  resting  against  the  stringers.  Thus  the 
framework  of  the  outer  wall  was  completed.  To 
supporv  the  roof  four  posts  were  set  in  the  ground 
about  ten  feet  apart  in  the  form  of  a  square,  near 
the  centre  of  the  building.  They  were  from 
twelve  to  fifteen  feet  in  height,  and  were  connected 
at  the  top  by  four  stringers  forming  a  square. 
The  rafters  rested  upon  these  stringers  and  upon 
the  top  of  the  circular  wall  below.  The  rafters 
were  covered  with  willow  matting,  and  upon  this 
was  spreai  a  layer  of  prairie  grass.  Then  both 
wall  and  roof,  from  the  ground  up  to  the  summit, 
were  covered  with  earth,  solid  and  hard,  to  a  thick- 
ness of  at  least  two  feet.  The  rafters  projected 
above  the  square  framework  at  the  summit,  so  as 
to  leave  a  circular  opening  in  the  centre  about 
four  feet  in  diameter.  This  hole  let  in  a  little 
light,  and  let  out  some  of  the  smoke  from  the  fire 
which   blazed  underneath  in  a  fire-pit  lined  with 


)i;-> 


^  Morgan,  Houses  and  House-Life, -pp.  126-129;  Catlin'e  North 
Amer.  Indians,  i.  Sljf. 


h^M\ 


I 


% 
f 

1  s 

■  ■;■. 

1-.,  ,' 
15  i:. 


t 


View,  Cross-section,  and  Ground-plan  of  Mandan  round  house. 


* 


I 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  81 

stone  slabs  set  on  edge.  The  only  other  aperture 
for  light  was  the  doorway,  which  was  a  kind  of 
vestibule  or  passage  some  ten  feet  in  length.  Cur- 
tains of  buffalo  robes  did  duty  instead  of  doors. 
The  family  compartments  were  triangles  with  base 
at  the  outer  wall,  and  apex  opening  upon  the 
central  hearth;  and  the  partitions  were  hanging 
mats  or  skins,  which  were  tastefully  fringed  and 
ornamented  with  quill-work  and  pictographs.^  In 
the  lower  Mandan  village,  visited  by  Catlin,  there 
were  about  fifty  such  houses,  each  able  to  accom- 
modate from  thirty  to  forty  persons.  The  village, 
situated  upon  a  bold  bluff  at  a  bend  of  the  Mis- 
souri river,  and  surrounded  by  a  palisade  of  stout 
timbers  more  than  ten  feet  in  height,  was  very 
strong  for  defensive  purposes.  Indeed,  it  was 
virtually  impregnable  to  Indian  methods  of  attack, 
for  the  earth-covered  houses  could  not  be  set  on 
fu-e  by  blazing  arrows,  and  just  within  the  palisade 
ran  a  trench  in  which  the  defenders  could  securely 
skulk,  while  through  the  narrow  chinks  between 
the  timbers  they  could  shoot  arrows  fast  enough 
to  keep  their  assailants  at  a  distance.  This  pur- 
pose was  further  secured  by  rude  bastions,  and 
considering  the  structure  as  a  whole  one  cannot 
help  admiring  the  ingenuity  which  it  exhibits.  It 
shows  a  marked  superioiity  over  the  conceptions 
of  military  defence  attained  by  the  Iroquois  or 
any  other  Indians  north  of  New  Mexico.  Besides 
the  commimal  houses  the  village  contained  its 
"  medicine  lodge,"  or  council  house,  and  an  open 
area  for  games  and  ceremonies.      In   the  spaces 

1  Catlin,  i.  Sa 


ft 

1 


m 


51 

ii 


82 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


between  the  houses  were  the  scaffolds  for  drying 
maize,  buffalo  meat,  etc.,  ascended  by  well-made 
portable  ladders.  Outside  the  village,  at  a  short 
distance  on  the  prairie,  was  a  group  of  such  scaf- 
folds upon  which  the  dead  were  left  to  moulder, 
somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  the  Parsees.^ 


"We  are  now  prepared  to  understand  some  es- 
sential points  in  the  life  of  the  groups  of  Indians 
occupying  the  region  of  the  Cordilleras,  both 
north  and  south  of  the  Isthmus  of  Darien,  all  the 
way  from  Zuni  to  Quito.  The  principal  groups 
are  the  Moquis  and  Zuiiis  of  Arizona 
tiiMiuebf^s!—  and  New  Mexico,  the  Nahuas  or  Na- 
Ltatimofbar-  luiatlac  tribcs  of  Mexico,  the  Mayas, 
ariBm.  Quicli^s,  aud  kindred  peoples  of  Cen- 

tral America ;  and  beyond  the  isthmus,  the  Chib- 
chas  of  New  Granada,  and  sundry  peoples  com- 
prised within  the  domain  of  the  Incas.  With 
regard  to  the  ethnic  relationships  of  these  vi'.rious 
groups,  opinion  is  still  in  a  state  of  confusion  ;  but 
it  is  not  necessary  for  our  present  purpose  that  we 
should  pause  to  discuss  the  numerous  questions 
thus  arising.  Our  business  is  to  get  a  clear  notion 
in  outline  of  the  character  of  the  culture  to  which 
these  peo])les  had  attained  at  the  time  of  the  Dis- 
covery. Here  we  ()])ser,e,  on  the  part  of  all,  a 
very  considerable  divergence  from  the  average  In- 
dian level  which  we  have  thus  far  been  describing. 
This  divergence  increases  as  we  go  from  Zuni 
toward  Cuzco,  reaching  iLs  extreme,  on  the  whole, 
among  the  Peruvians,  though  in  some  respects  tho 

1  Catlin,  i.  90. 


H, 


I 


Hiii 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  83 

nearest  approach  to  civilization  was  made  by  the 
Mayas.  All  these  peoples  were  at  least  one  full 
ethnical  period  nearer  to  true  civilization  than  the 
Iroquois,  —  and  a  vast  amount  of  change  and  im- 
provement is  involved  in  the  conception  of  an  en- 
tire ethnical  period.  According  to  Mr.  Morgan, 
one  more  such  period  would  have  brought  the 
average  level  of  these  Cordilleran  peoples  to  as 
high  a  plane  as  that  of  the  Greeks  described  in 
the  Odyssey.  Let  us  now  observe  the  principal 
points  involved  in  the  change,  bearing  in  mind 
that  it  implies  a  considerable  lapse  of  time.  While 
the  date  1325,  at  which  the  city  of  Mexico  was 
foimded,  is  the  earliest  date  in  the  history  of  that 
country  which  can  be  regarded  as  securely  estab- 
lished, it  was  preceded  by  a  long  series  of  genera- 
tions of  migration  and  warfare,  the  confused  and 
fragmentary  record  of  which  historians  have  tried 
—  hitherto  with  scant  success  —  to  imravel.  To 
develop  such  a  culture  as  that  of  the  Aztecs  out  of 
an  antecedent  culture  similar  to  that  of  the  Iro- 
quois must  of  course  have  taken  a  long  time. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  most  conspicu- 
ous distinctive  marks  of  the  grade  of  cidture  at- 
tained by  the  Cordilleran  peoples  were  two,  —  the 
cultivation   of   maize  in   large   quanti- 

.       ....  ,-  (.11  Hortirultiire 

ties  by  irrigation,  and  the  use  or  ado  bo-  \yitii  irrica- 
brick  or  stoiit  in  building.     Probably  ciiit^cture 
there  was   at  first,  to   some  extent,   a 
causal  connection  betwaen  the  former  and  the  lat- 
ter,    The  region  of  the  Moqui-Zuni  ciUture  is  a 
region  in  which  arid  plains  become  richly  fertile 
when  water  from  neighbouring  cliffs  or  peaks  is 


84 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


\  '  It 


■  i  . 


•1 


directed  down  upon  them.  It  is  mainly  an  affair 
of  sluices,  not  of  pump  or  well,  which  seem  to  have 
been  alike  beyond  the  ken  of  aboriginal  Ameri- 
cans of  whatever  grade.  The  change  of  occupa- 
tion involved  in  raising  large  crops  of  corn  by  the 
{1  id  of  sluices  would  facilitate  an  increase  in  density 
of  population,  and  would  encourage  a  preference 
for  agricidtural  over  predatory  life.  Such  changes 
would  be  liJ^ely  to  favour  the  development  of  de- 
fensive military  art.  The  Mohawk's  surest  de- 
fence lay  in  the  terror  which  his  prowess  created 
hundreds  of  miles  away.  One  can  easily  see  how 
the  forefathers  of  our  Moquis  and  Zuilis  may  have 
come  to  prefer  the  security  gained  by  living  more 
closely  together  and  building  impregnable  for- 
tresses. 

The  earthen  wall  of  the  Mandan,  supported  on 
a  framework  of  posts  and  slabs,  seems  to  me  cu- 
riously and  strikingly  suggestive  of  the  incijjient 
pottery  made  by  surrounding  a  basket  with  a 
coating  of  clay.^  When  it  was  discovered  how 
to  make  the  earthen  bowl  or  dish  without  the 
basket,  a  new  era  in  progress  was  begun.  So 
when  it  was  discovered  that  an  earthen  wall  coidd 
be  fashioned  to  answer  the  requirements  of  house- 
builders  without  the  need  of  a  permanent  wooden 
framework,  another  great  step  was  taken.  Again 
the  consequences  were  great  enough  to 

PoRsible  oriRin  i         .,  i      ,i        i         •        •  c 

ofiKiohearchi-  make  it  mark  the  begmnmg  ot  a  new 

ethnical   period.      If   we    su])pose    the 

central  portion  of   our  continent,  the  Mississippi 

and  Missouri  valleys,  to  have  been  occupied  at 

^  Sae  above,  p.  25. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  85 

some  time  by  tribes  familiar  with  the  Mandan 
style  of  building ;  and  if  we  further  suppose  a 
gradual  extension  or  migration  of  this  population, 
or  some  part  of  it,  westward  into  the  mountain  re- 
gion ;  that  woidd  be  a  movement  into  a  region  in 
which  timber  was  scarce,  while  adobe  clay  was 
abundant.  Under  such  circumstances  tlie  useful 
qualities  of  that  peculiar  clay  could  not  fail  to  be 
soon  discovered.  The  simple  exposure  to  sunshine 
would  (piickly  convert  a  Mandan  house  built  with 
it  into  an  adobe  house  ;  the  coating  of  earth  would 
become  a  coating  of  brick.  It  would  not  then  take 
long  to  ascertain  that  with  such  adobe-brick  coidd 
be  built  walls  at  once  light  and  strong,  erect  and 
tall,  such  as  coidd  not  be  built  witli  common  clay. 
In  some  such  way  as  this  I  think  the  discovery 
nnist  have  been  made  by  the  ancestors  of  the 
Zunis,  and  others  who  have  built  pueblos.  After 
tlie  pueblo  style  of  architecture,  with  its  erect 
walls  and  terraced  stories,  had  become  developed, 
it  was  an  easy  step,  when  the  occasion  suggested 
it,  to  substitute  for  the  adobe-brick  coarse  rubble- 
stones  embedded  in  adobe.  The  final  'stage  was 
reached  in  Mexico  and  Yucatan,  when  soft  coral- 
line limestone  was  shaped  into  blocks  with  a  flint 
chisel  and  laid  in  courses  with  adobe-mortar. 

The  pueblos  of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona  are 
among  the  most  interesting  structures  in  the 
world.  Several  are  still  inhabited  by  the  de- 
scendants of  the  people  who  were  living  in  them 
at  the  time  of  the  S  mish  Discovery,  and  their 
primitive  customs  and  habits  of  thought  have 
been  preserved  to  the  present  day  with  but  little 


8G 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


i  .  ■ 


!'  m* 


change.  The  long  sojourn  of  Mr.  Gushing,  of 
Mr.  cusiiiiig  *^i6  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  in  the  Zufii 
at  zuiii.  pueblo,  has  already  thrown  a  flood  of 

light  upon  many  points  in  American  archaeology.^ 
As  in  the  case  of  American  aborigines  generally, 
the  social  life  of  these  people  is  closely  connected 
with  their  architecture,  and  the  pueblos  which  are 
still  inhabited  seem  to  furnish  us  with  the  key  to 
the  interpretation  of  those  that  we  find  deserted 
or  in  ruins,  whether  in  Arizona  or  in  Guatemala. 


□□d 


-II — II — II — II — 11— ir    II     ir 


Dcz:aa 


DC 


DDD 
□DD 
DDD 
CDD 
DDD 


DDD 

DDD 

DDD 

DDD 
DDD 


\ 


PUEBLO  HUNGO  PAVIK 

Chtco  CafTon 

N.  M. 

xui.  lu  nil 

».   »« 


\ 

I 

. ' 


In  the  -architecture  of  the  pueblos  one  typical 
form  is  reproduced  with  sundry  varia- 

Typical  struc-        .  •  i    i.    n         rpi        j.        •      1     r 

tuieofthe       tions   lu  detail.     J  he  typical   form   is 
that  of  a  solid  block  of  buildings  mak- 
ing  three   sides  of  an   extensive  rectangidar  en- 

'  See  hia  articles  in  the  Century  Magazine,  Dec,  1882,  Feb., 
1883,  May,  1883  ;  and  his  papers  op  "Zuiii  Fetiches,"  Reports  of 
the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  ii.  9-45 ;  "  A  Study  of  Pueblo  Pottery 
as  Illustrative  of  Zuiii  Culture  Growth,"  id.  iv.  473-521  ;  see  also 
Mrs.  Stevenson's  paper,  "  Religious  Life  of  a  Zuiii  Child,"  id.  v. 
530-555  ;  Sylvester  Baxter,  "  An  Aboriginal  Pilgrimage,"  Cen- 
tury  Magazine.  Aug.,  1882. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  87 

closure  or  courtyard.  On  the  insitle,  facing  upon 
the  courtyard,  the  structure  is  hut  one  story  in 
height ;  on  the  outside,  L>oking  out  upon  the  sur- 
rounding country,  it  rises  to  three,  or  perhaps 
even  five  or  six  stories.  From  inside  to  outside 
the  flat  roofs  rise  in  a  series  of  terraces,  so  that 
the  floor  of  tht  second  row  is  continuous  with  the 
roof  of  the  firsc,  the  floor  of  the  third  row  is  con- 
tinuous with  the  roof  of  the  second,  and  so  on. 
The  fourth  side  of  the  rectangle  is  formed  by  ft 
solid  block  of  one-story  apartments,  usually  with 
one  or  two  narrow  gateways  overlooked  by  higher 
structures  within  the  enclosure.  Except  these 
gateways  there  is  no  entrance  from  without ;  the 
only  windows  are  frowning  loop-holes,  and  access 
to  the  several  apartments  is  gained  through  sky- 
lights reached  by  portable  ladders.  Such  a  struc- 
ture is  what  our  own  forefathers  would  have  na. 
turally  called  a  "  burgh,"  or  fortress ;  it  is  in  one 
sense  a  house,  yet  in  another  sense  a  town  ;  ^  its 
divisions  are  not  so  much  houses  as  compart- 
ments ;  it  is  a  joint-tenement  affair,  like  the  Iro- 
quois long  houses,  but  in  a  higher  stage  of  de- 
velopment. 

So  far  as  they  have  been  studied,  the  pueblo 
Indians  are  found  to  be  organized  in  clans,  with 
descent  in  the  female  line,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
ruder  Indians  above  described.  In  the  event  of 
marriage  the  young  husband  goes  to  live  with  his 
wife,  and  she  may  turn  him  out  of  doors  if  he 

'  Cf.  Greek  oIko^,  "  house,"  with  Latin  vicus,  "  street  "  or  "  vil- 
lage," Sanskrit  vesa,  "dwelling-place,"  English  ivick,  "man- 
sion "  or  "  village." 


•  > 


a 

o 
a 

w 


s 


o 
o 


I'' 


^  .  ANCIENT  AMERICA.  89 

deserves  it.^  The  ideas  of  propei'ty  seem  still  lim- 
ited to  that  of  possessory  right,  with  p„pyoBo. 
the  ultimate  title  in  the  clan,  except  "'**'*• 
tliat  portable  articles  subject  to  individual  owner- 
ship have  become  more  nmnerous.  In  govern- 
ment the  council  of  sachems  reappears  with  a 
principal  sachem,  or  cacique,  called  by  the  Span- 
iards "  gobernmlor."  There  is  an  organized  priest- 
hood, with  distinct  orders,  and  a  ceremonial  more 
elaborate  than  those  of  the  ruder  Indians.  In 
every  pueblo  there  is  to  be  found  at  least  one 
"  estufa,"  or  council-house,  for  governmental  or 
religious  transactions.  Usually  there  are  two  or 
three  or  more  such  estufas.  Li  mythology,  in 
what  we  may  call  pictography  or  rudimentary 
hieroglyphics,  as  well  as  in  ordinary  handicrafts, 
there  is  a  marked  advance  beyond  the  Indians  of 
the  lower  status  of  barbarism,  after  making  due 
allowances  for  such  things  as  tlie  people  of  the 
pueblos  have  learned  from  white  men.^ 

^  "  With  the  woman  rests  the  security  of  the  marriape  ties ; 
and  it  must  be  said,  in  her  high  honour,  that  slie  rarely  abuses 
tha  privilege  ;  that  is,  never  sends  her  husband  '  to  the  home  of 
his  fathers,'  unless  he  richly  deserves  it."  But  should  not  Mr. 
Gushing  have  said  "  heme  of  his  mothers,"  or  perhaps,  of  "  his 
sisters  and  his  cousins  and  his  aunts  ?  "  For  a  moment  after- 
ward he  tells  us,  "  To  her  belong  all  the  children  ;  and  descent, 
including  inheritance,  is  on  her  side."  Century  Magazine,  May, 
188:3,  p.  3."). 

^  For  example,  since  the  arrival  of  tlie  Spaniards  some  or  per- 
haps all  of  the  pueblos  have  introduced  chimneys  into  their  apart- 
ments ;  but  when  they  were  first  visited  by  Coronado,  he  found 
the  people  wearing  cotton  garments,  and  Franciscan  friars  in 
l.")Sl  remarked  upon  the  superior  quality  of  their  shoes.  In  spin- 
ning and  weaving,  as  well  as  in  the  grinding  of  meal,  a  notable 
advance  had  been  made. 


•a 

o 

cq 


s 


a 
o 

O 

-4-> 
CO 

« 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


91 


From  the  piiel)los  still  existing,  whether  in- 
habited or  in  ruins,  we  may  eventually  get  some 
sort  of  clue  to  the  i)()})ulations  of  ancient  town.i 
visited  by  the  Spanish  discoverers.^  wonderful  an- 
The  pueblo  of  Zufii  seems  to  have  had  i^t^.r^Jioo 
at  one  time  a  poi)ulation  of  5,000,  but  ^''"''^• 
it  has  dwindled  to  less  than  2,000.  Of  the  ruined 
pueblos,  built  of  stone  with  adobe  mortar,  in  the 
valley  of  the  Rio  Chaco,  the  Pueblo  Ilungo  Pavio 
contained  73  apartments  in  the  first  story,  53  in 
the  second,  and  29  in  the  third,  with  an  average 
size  of  18  feet  by  13  ;  and  would  have  accommo- 
dated about  1,000  Indians.  In  the  same  valley 
Pueblo  Bonito,  with  four  stories,  contained  not  less 
than  640  apartments,  with  room  enough  for  a  pop- 
ulation of  3,000  ;  within  a  third  of  a  mile  from 
this  huge  structure  stood  Pueblo  Chettro  Kettle, 
with  50G  apartments.  The  most  common  variation 
from  the  rectangular  shajie  was  that  in  which  a 
terraced  semicircle  was  substituted  for  the  three 
terraced  sides,  as  in  Pueblo  Bonito,  or  the  whole 
rectangular  design  was  converted  into  an  ellipse, 
as  in  Pueblo  Penasca  Blanca.  There  are  indica- 
tions that  these  fortresses  were  not  in  all  cases  * 
built  at  one  time,  but  that,  at  l(»ast  in  some  cases, 
they  grew  by  gradual  accretions.^  The  smallness 
of  the  distan(;es  between  those  in  the  Chaco  val- 
ley suggests  that  their  inhabitants  must  have  been 
united  in  a  confederation  ;  and  one  can  easily  see 
that  an  actual  juxtaposition  or  partial  coalescence 

1  At  least  a  better  one  than  Mr.  Prescott  had  when  he  naivoly 
reckoned  five  persons  to  a  houseliold,  Conquest  of  Mexico,  ii.  97. 
'^  Morgan,  Houses  and  House-Li/e,  chap.  vii. 


9 


92 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


of  such  communities  would  have  made  a  city  of 
very  imposing  appearance.     The  pueblos  are  al- 


PUEBLO  PERaSCA  BLANCf, 

Chsco  Cano(\ 
H.  M. 


ways  found  situated  near  a  river,  and  their  gar- 
dens, lying  outside,  are  easily  accessible  to  sluice/ 


ANCIENT  AMEBIC  A. 


98 


from  neighbouring  cliffs  or  mesas.     But  in  some 
cases,  as  the  Wolpi  pueblo  of  the  Mo-  i^e  Moqui 
quis,  the  whole  stronghold  is  built  upon  p"^**^"*" 
the  summit  of  the  cliff ;  there  is  a  coalescence  of 
communal  structures,  each  enclosing  a  courtyard, 
in  which  there  is  a  spring  for  the  water-supply ; 
and  the  irrigated  gardens  are  built  in  terrace-form 
just  below  on  the  bluff,  and  protected  by  solid 
walls.     From  this  curious  pueblo  another  transi- 
tion  takes   us   to   the    extraordinary   cliff-houses 
found  in  the  Chelly,  Mancos,  and  McElmo  caBons, 
and  elsewhere,  —  veritable  human  eyries  perched 
in  crevices  or  clefts  of  the  perpendic-  Theoiiff 
ular  rock,  accessible  only  by  dint  of  a  p"*^^°^ 
tpilsome  and  perilous  climb  ;  places  of  refuge,  per- 
haps for  fragments  of  tribes  overwhelmed  by  more 
barbarous  invaders,  yet  showing  in  their  dwelling- 
rooms  and  estufas  marks  of  careful  building  and 
tastefid  adornment.  1 

The  pueblo  of  Zuiii  is  a  more  extensive  and 
complex  structure  than  the  ruined  pueblos  on  the 
Chaco  river.  It  is  not  so  much  an  enormous  com- 
mmial  house  as  a  small  town  formed  of  a  number 
of  such  houses  crowded  together,  with  access  from 
one  to  another  along  their  roof -terraces,  pug^i^  ^f 
Some  of  the  structures  are  of  adobe  ^""'' 
brick,  others  of  stone  embedded  in  adobe  mortar 

1  For  careful  descriptions  of  the  ruined  pueblos  and  cliff- 
houses,  see  Nadaillac's  Prehistoric  America,  chap,  v.,  and  Short's 
North  Americans  of  Antiquity,  chap.  vii.  The  latter  sees  in  them 
"the  melancholy  vestiges  of  a  people  gradually  "  succumbing-  to 
their  unpropitious  surroundings  —  a  land  which  is  fast  becoming 
a  howling  wihlemess,  with  its  scourging  aauds  and  roaming  savage 
Bedouin  —  the  Anachea." 


I 


94 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Pueblo  of 
Tlascola. 


and  covered  with  plaster.  There  are  two  open 
plazas  or  squares  in  the  town,  and  several  streets, 
some  of  which  are  •  covered  ways  passing  beneath 
the  upper  stories  of  houses.  The  effect,  though 
not  splendid,  must  be  very  picturesque,  and  would 
doubtless  astonish  and  bewilder  visitors  unpre- 
pared for  such  a  sight.  When  Coronado's  men 
discovered  Zuiii  in  1540,  although  that  style  of 
building  was  no  longer  a  novelty  to  them,  they 
compared  the  place  to  Granada. 

Now  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  Cortes  made  the 
same  comparison  in  the  case  of  Tlascala,  one  of  the 
famous  towns  at  which  he  stopped  on  his  march 
from  Vera  Cruz  to  the  city  of  Mexico.  In  his 
letter  to  the  emperor  Charles  V.,  he  compared 
Tlascala  to  Granada,  "  affirming  that  it 
was  larger,  stronger,  and  more  populous 
than  the  Moorish  capital  at  the  time  of  the  con- 
quest, and  quite  as  well  built."  ^  Upon  this  Mr. 
Prescott  observes,  "we  shall  be  slow  to  believe 
that  its  edifices  could  have  rivalled  those  monu- 
ments of  Oriental  magnificence,  whose  light  aerial 
forms  still  survive  after  the  lapse  of  ages,  the  ad- 
miration of  every  traveller  of  sensibility  and  taste. 
The  truth  is  that  Cortes,  like  Columbus,  saw  ob- 
jects through  the  warm  medium  of  his  own  fond 
imagination,  giving  them  a  higher  tone  of  colour- 
ing and  larger  dimensions  than  were  strictly  war- 
ranted by  the  fact."     Or,  as  Mr.  Bandelier  puts 

^  "La  qual  ciudad  .  .  .  es  muy  mayor  que  Granada,  y  muy 
mas  fuerte,  y  de  tan  buenos  edificios,  y  de  mucha  mas  gente,  que 
Granada  tenia  al  tiempo  que  ae  gaiio."  Cortes,  Relacion  segunda 
al  Emperador,  ap.  Lorenzana,  p.  TiS,  cited  in  Preacott's  Conquest 
^Mexico,  vol.  i.  p.  401  (Tth  ed.,  London,  1855). 


ANCIENT  AMEmCA. 


",  when  it  comes  to 
numbers  and  dimensions  "«„,  "''*^"«'>t»  ^'"'"t 
conquerors  cannot  be  takp„  ''f  »"P«ons  of  the 
expression  of  feelin!,  ,Zl,!?  ^'""^'  ""'y  "^  ti>e 
^critical."     From  del'l     ^    ^  entertained   but 

;f:<'e-iptions;:i^|^,f-j-^^^^^^ 

■t -f  evident  that  there  cf.dd"  ll      T  '""'«'*' 
•lifference  in  size  between  tI.'''  "**"'  """h 
bonr  ChoMa.     The  plnl5       '^''  '^'^  '*«  °e%h- 
l>as  often  been  giv^.^wT/n"'"  ^««-- 1"™ 
"^•■t-  from  elaborate  TrcWl'?"*"  200,000, 
•»ade  on   the  spot  in   1881  Tj°^«^«g«*'"°' 
cl'ules  that  it  cann„t\         '  ^''-  ^andelier  con- 
000,  and  this  n„mb°   rel«  ^'^'"''^  ''"'^^^^  ^l 
-ates  of  two  yeTZZt^  T''  ^'*  ^^-^  est . 
Las  Casas  and  tI^ZTI"'"'''''  ""^°"*-^. 
food.'     We  may  therefore  ,  "°''""'*'y  ™der- 

'"tion  of  Tlaseia  w      alrSro '''  t  ^P"" 
Popidation  of  the  citv  of  P        .■      ^'>''  ^e 

e-tj  of  Granada,  at  the  time  of 

pp!  t^wf"  T  ■'  ^'"^"■"^-l  T^r  in  Mexico  B    .       ,<= 
"0„.    I  "fqueinada's  wo„l,    „,,  ^""">'  Boston,  1885, 

Qaa„<  o  ,„,„„„  ,„^j^«rds,    cted  by  Bandolier,  at^ 

P-  ^'-    A  proliflo  sonreo  „f  ^^"  ,"""••  '•''■  «!•  cap.  ji, 

40A)0  l,„„,e,,  a„d  m„l,ip,yi„.  a",^  T         ""■  '™  *»  ««•» 
-0",()00.    But  40,000  house,  „„„„Tj    i       "  °'"»"«<1  *«  fiCTw 

2;  7M> «; '-.  .'00  pe.  Zr^w  "et  "■'  ■"" »'«'-«  S 

«'We),  w„„ld  mate  a  oity  of  8  0(J)  000  •  ',    ,"■"'  "  '"  '""  «>  Po^- 

■^"  -/to  s;i;p.i;t,r--  t/r-™ '"  °  "^- ' 


96 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMEBIC  A. 


its  conquest  by  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  is  said  by 
the  greatest  of  Spanish  historians  ^  to  have  been 
about  200,000.  It  would  thus  apj^ear  that  Cortes 
sometimes  let  his  feelings  run  away  with  him  ; 
and,  all  things  considered,  small  blame  to  him  if 
he  did  I  In  studying  the  story  of  the  Spanish 
conquest  of  America,  liberal  allowance  must  often 
be  made  for  inaccuracies  of  statement  that  were 
usually  pardonable  and  sometimes  inevitable. 

But  when  Cortes  described  Tlascala  as  "quite 
as  well  built "  as  Granada,  it  is  not  at  all  likely 
that  he  was  thinking  about  that  exquisite  Moorish 
architecture  which  in  the  mind  of  Mr.  Prescott 
or  any  cultivated  modern  writer  is  the  first  thing 
to  be  suggested  by  the  name.  The  Spaniards  of 
those  days  did  not  admire  the  artistic  work  of 
"  infidels  ;  "  they  covered  up  beautiful  arabesques 
with  a  wash  of  dirty  plaster,  and  otherwise  be- 
haved very  much  like  the  Puritans  who  smashed 
the  "  idolatrous "  statues  in  English  cathedrals. 
When  Cortes  looked  at  Tlascala,  and  Coronado 
looked  at  Zuni,  and  both  soldiers  were  reminded 
of  Granada,  they  were  probably  looking  at  those 
places  with  a  professional  eye  as  fortresses  hard 
to  capture ;  and  from  this  point  of  view  there  was 
doubtless  some  justice  in  the  comparison. 

In  the  description  of  Tlascala  by  the  Spaniards 
who  first  saw  it,  with  its  dark  and  narrow  streets, 
its  houses  of  adobe,  or  "  the  better  sort  "  of  stone 
laid  in  adobe  mortar,  and  its  flat  and  terraced 
roofs,  one  is  irresistibly  reminded  of  such  a  pueblo 

^  Mariana,  Historia  de  Espana,  Valencia,  1795,  torn.  viii.  p 
817. 


i 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


97 


le 
Id 


Tl>e  ancient 
city  of  Mexico 
waa  a  great 
composite 
pueblo. 


as  Zuni.  Tlascala  was  a  town  of  a  type  prob- 
ably common  in  Mexico.  In  some  respects,  as 
will  hereafter  appear,  the  city  of 
Mexico  showed  striking  variations  from 
the  common  type.  Yet  there  too  were 
to  be  seen  the  huge  houses,  with  ter- 
raced roofs,  built  around  a  square  courtyard;  in 
one  of  them  450  Spaniards,  with  more  than  1,000 
Tlascalan  allies,  were  accommodated ;  in  another, 
called  "  Montezuma's  palace,"  one  of  the  conquer- 
ors, who  came  several  times  intending  to  see  the 
whole  of  it,  got  so  tired  with  wandering  through 
the  interminable  succession  of  rooms  that  at 
length  he  gave  it  up  and  never  saw  them  all.^ 
This  might  have  happened  in  such  a  building  as 
Pueblo  Bonito ;  and  a  suspicion  is  raised  that 
Montezuma's  city  was  really  a  vast  composite 
pueblo,  and  that  its  so-called  palaces  were  com- 
munal buildings  in  principle  like  the  pueblos  of 
the  Chaco  valley. 

Of  course  the  Spanish  discoverers  could  not  be 
expected  to  understand  the  meaning  of  what  they 
saw.     It  dazed  and  bewildered  them.     They  laiew 
little  or  nothing  of  any  other  kind  of  Natural  mis- 
society  than   feudal  monarchy,  and   if  spani^iidlt 
they  made  such  mistakes  as  to  call  the 
head  war-chief  a  "king"  (i.  e.  feudal  king)  or 
"  emperor,"  and  the  clan-chiefs  "  lords  "  or  "  noble- 
men," if  they  supposed  that  these  huge  fortresses 

1  "  Et  io  entrai  piii  di  qiiattro  volte  in  una  casa  del  gran  Sig-nor 
non  per  altro  effetto  die  per  vederla,  et  ogni  volta  vi  caniminano 
tanto  die  mi  staneano,  et  niai  la  fini  di  vedere  tiitta."  Relatione 
fatta  per  un  gentiV  huoino  del  Signor  Fernando  Cortese,  apud  Ra» 
musio,  Navigationi  et  Viaggi,  Venice,  1550,  torn.  iii.  fol.  3()U. 


98  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

were  like  feudal  castles  and  palaces  in  Europe, 
they  were  quite  excusable.  Such  misconceptions 
were  common  enough  before  barbarous  societies 
had  been  much  studied ;  and  many  a  dusky  war- 
rior, without  a  tithe  of  the  pomp  and  splendour  " 
about  him  that  surrounded  Montezuma,  has  figured 
in  the  pages  of  history  as  a  mighty  potentate  girt 
with  many  of  the  trappings  of  feudalism.  ^  Initial 
misconceptions  that  were  natural  enough,  indeed 
unavoidable,  found  expression  in  an  absurdly  in- 
appropriate  nomenclature  ;  and  then  the  use  of 
wrong  names  and  titles  bore  fruit  in  what  one 
cannot  properly  call  a  theory  but  rather  an  inco- 
herent medley  of  notions  about  barbaric  society. 
Nothing  could  be  further  ivom  feudalism,  in  which 
the  relation  of  landlord  and  tenant  is  a  funda- 
mental element,  than  the  society  of  the  American 
aborigines,  in  which  that  relation  was  utterly  un- 
Contrastbe-  knowu  and  inconceivable.  This  more 
iwn  alid^"*^^^  primitive  form  of  society  is  not  improp- 
geutiiism.  g^jy  called  gentilism,  inasmuch  as  it  is 
based  upon  the  gens  or  clan,  with  communism  in 

^  When  Pocahontas  visited  London  in  1616  she  was  received  at 
court  as  befitted  a  "  king's  daughter,"  and  the  old  Virginia  his- 
torian, William  Stith  (born  in  1680),  says  it  was  a  "  constant 
tradition"  in  his  day  that  James  I.  "became  jealous,  and  was 
highly  offended  at  Mr.  Rolfe  for  marrying  a  princess."  The  no- 
tion was  that  "  if  Virgijiia  descended  to  Pocahontas,  as  it  might 
do  at  Powhatan's  death,  at  her  own  death  the  kingdom  would  be 
vested  in  Mr.  Rolfe 's  posterity."  Esten  Cooke's  Virginia,  p.  100. 
Powhatan  (i.  e.  Wahunsunakok,  chief  of  the  Powhatan  tribe)  was 
often  called  "  emperor "  by  the  English  settlers.  To  their  in- 
tense bewilderment  he  told  one  of  them  that  his  office  would  de- 
scend to  his  [maternal]  brothers,  even  though  he  had  sons  living. 
It  was  thought  that  tliis  could  not  be  true. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


99 


living,  and  with  the  conception  of  individual  own- 
ership of  property  undeveloped.  It  was  gentilisni 
that  everywhere  prevailed  throughout  the  myriads 
of  unrecorded  centuries  durino-  which  the  foremost 
races  of  mankind  struggled  up  through  savagery 
and  barbarism  into  civilization,  while  weaker  and 
duller  races  lagged  behind  at  various  stages  on 
the  way.  The  change  from  "  gentile  "  change  from 
society  to  political  society  as  we  know  it  to  p^'iltira"''*^ 
was  in  some  respects  the  most  impor-  *°'''*"^y- 
tant  change  that  has  occurred  in  human  aifairs 
since  men  became  human.  It  might  be  rouglily 
defined  as  the  change  from  personal  to  territorial 
organization.  It  was  accomplished  when  the  sta- 
tionary clan  became  converted  into  the  township, 
and  the  stationary  tribe  into  the  small  state ;  ^ 
when  the  conception  of  individual  pro])erty  in  land 
was  fully  acquired  ;  when  the  tie  of  physical  kin- 
ship ceased  to  be  indispensable  as  a  bond  for  hold- 
ing a  society  together  ;  when  the  clansman  became 
a  citizen.  This  momentous  change  was  accom- 
\)lislied  among  the  Greeks  during  a  period  begin- 


1  The  small  states  into  which  trihes  were  at  first  transformed 
have  in  many  cases  survived  to  the  present  time  as  portions  of 
great  states  or  nations.  Tlie  shires  or  counties  of  England,  which 
have  been  reproduced  in  the  United  States,  originated  in  this 
way,  as  I  have  briefly  explained  in  my  little  book  on  Civil  Gov- 
ernment in  the  United  States,  p.  49.  When  you  look  on  the  map 
of  England,  and  see  the  town  of  Ickiingham  in  the  county  of 
Suffolk,  it  means  that  this  place  was  once  the  "home"  of  the 
"  Icklings  "  or  "  children  of  Ickel,"  a  clan  which  formed  part  of 
the  tribe  of  Angles  ivuown  as  "South  folk."  So  the  names  of 
Gaulish  tribes  survived  as  names  of  French  provinces,  e.  g.  Au- 
vergne  from  the  Arverni,  Poitou  from  the  Pictavi,  Anjou  from 
the  Andecavi,  Btarn  from  the  Bigerrones,  etc. 


100  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

ning  shortly  before  the  first  Olympiad  (b.  C.  77G), 
and  ending  with  the  reforms  of  Kleisthenes  at 
Athens  (b.  c.  509)  ;  among  the  Romans  it  was 
accomplished  by  the  series  of  legislative  clianges 
beginning  with  those  ascribed  to  Servius  Tullius 
(about  B.  c.  550),  and  ^Jerfected  by  the  time  of 
the  first  Punic  War  (b.  c.  264-241).  In  each 
case  about  three  centviries  was  required  to  work 
the  change.^  If  now  the  reader,  familiar  with  Eu- 
ropean history,  will  reflect  upon  the  period  of  more 
than  a  thousand  years  which  interver^ed  between 
the  date  last  named  and  the  time  when  feudalism 
became  thoroughly  established,  if  he  will  recall  to 
mind  the  vast  and  powerful  complication  of  causes 
which  operated  to  transform  civil  society  from  the 
aspect  which  it  wore  in  the  days  of  Regulus  and 
the  second  Ptolemy  to  that  which  it  had  assumed 
in  the  times  of  Henry  the  Fowler  or  Fulk  of  An- 
jou,  he  will  begin  to  realize  how  much  "  feudal- 
ism "  implies,  and  what  a  wealth  of  experience  it 
involves,  above  and  beyond  the  change  from  "  gen- 
tile "  to  "  civil  "  society.  It  does  not  apjDcar  that 
any  people  in  ancient  America  ever  approached 
very  near  to  this  earlier  change.  None  had  fairly 
begun  to  emerge  from  gentilism  ;  none  had  ad- 
vanced so  far  as  the  Greeks  of  the  first  01ymi)iad 
or  the  Romans  under  the  rule  of  the  Tarquins. 
The  first  eminent  wi'iter  to  express  a  serious 

^  "It  was  no  easy  task  to  accomplish  such  a  fundamental 
chanjfe,  however  simple  and  obvious  it  may  now  seem.  .  .  .  An- 
terior to  experience,  a  township,  as  the  unit  of  a  political  system, 
was  abstruse  enough  to  tax  the  Greeks  and  Romans  to  the  depths 
of  their  capacities  before  the  conception  was  formed  and  set  in 
practical  operation."  ■   Morgan,  Ancient  Society,  p.  218. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA.  lOt 

doubt  as  to  the  correctness  of  the  earlier  views  of 
Mexican  civilization  was  tliat  saf'acious 
bcotchnian,   VVilliam  Kobertson.^     llie  totiieerro- 

.  1  1  •!    1       •  neoiisiieBB  of 

illustrious    statesman   and    philolo^rist,  tiw  spaniah 

uucouuta. 

Albert  Gallatin,  founder  of  the  Aineri- 
can  Ethnological  Society,  published  in  the  first 
volume  of  its  "  Transactions  "  an  essay  which  rec- 
ognized the  danger  oi  trusting  the  Spanish  narra- 
tives without  very  careful  and  critical  scrutiny.'^ 
It  is  to  be  observed  that  Mr.  Gallatin  approached 
the  subject  with  somewhat  more  knowledge  of 
aboriginal  life  in  America  than  had  been  pos- 
sessed by  previous  writers.  A  similar  scepticism 
was  expressed  by  Lewis  Cass,  who  also  knew  a 
great  deal  about  Indians.^  Next  came  Mr.  Mor- 
gan,* the  man  of  path-breaking  ideas,  whose  mi- 
nute and  profound  acquaintance  with  Indian  life 
was  joined  with  a  power  of  penetrating  the  hidden 
implications  of  facts  so  keen  and  so   sure  as  to 

^  Robertson's  History  of  America,  9th  ed.  vol.  iii.  pp.  274,  281. 

^  "  Notes  on  the  Semi-civilized  Nations  of  Mexico,  Yucatan, 
and  Central  America,"  American  Ethnological  Society^i:  Transac- 
tions, vol.  i.,  New  York,  1852.  There  is  a  brief  account  of  Mr. 
Gallatin's  pioneer  work  in  American  philology  and  ethnology  in 
Stevens's  Albert  Gallatin,  pp.  8Sv>-8UG. 

^  Cass,  "Aboriginal  Structures,"  North  Amer.  Beviiw,  Oct., 
1840. 

*  Mr.  R.  A.  Wilson's  New  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico, 
Philadelphia,  1859,  denounced  the  Spanish  conquerors  as  whole- 
sale liars,  but  as  his  book  was  ignorant,  uncritical,  and  f  idl  of  wild 
fancies,  it  produced  little  effect.  It  was  demolished,  with  neat- 
ness and  despatch,  in  two  articles  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  April 
and  May,  1859,  by  the  eminent  historian  John  Foster  Kirk,  whoa« 
History  of  Charles  the  Bold  is  in  many  ryspycts  a  v/orthy  compu-"- 
ion  to  the  works  of  Prescott  and  Motley.  Mr.  Kirk  had  been  y  s 
Prescott's  secretary. 


102 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


amount  to  genius.  Mr.  Morgan  saw  the  nature 
of  the  (lehision  under  which  the  Spaniards  lar 
boured  ;  he  saw  that  what  they  mistook  for  feudal 
castles  o\med  by  great  lords,  and  inhabited  by 
Detection  and  dependent  retainers,  were  really  huge 
the'erlwH.'by'  communal  houses,  owned  and  inhabited 
Lewis  Morgan,  y^^  elaus,  or  ratlicr  by  segments  of  over- 
grown clans.  He  saw  this  so  vividly  that  it  be- 
trayed him  now  and  then  into  a  somewhat  impa- 
tient and  dogmatic  manner  of  statement ;  but  that 
was  a  slight  fault,  for  what  he  saw  was  not  the 
outcome  of  dreamy  speculation  but  of  scientific 
insight.  His  researches,  which  reduced  "  Monte- 
zimia's  empire  "  to  a  confederacy  of  tribes  dwell- 
ing in  pueblos,  governed  by  a  council  of  chiefs,  and 
collecting  tribute  from  neighbouring  pueblos,  have 
been  fidly  sustained  by  subsequent  investigation. 

The  state  of  society  which  Cortes  saw  has,  in- 
deed, passed  away,  and  its  monuments  and  hiero- 
glyphic records  have  been  in  great  jiart  destroyed. 
Nevertheless  some  monuments  and  some  hiero- 
glyphic records  remain,  and  liie  people  are  still 
there.  Tlascalans  and  Aztecs,  descendants  in  the 
eleventh  or  twelfth  generation  from  the  men  whose 
bitter  feuds  gave  such  a  golden  o])i)ortunity  to 
Cortes,  still  dwell  upon  the  soil  of  Mexico,  and 
speak  the  language  in  which  Montezuma  made 
his  last  harangue  to  the  furious  people.  There  is, 
moreover,  a  great  mass  of  literature  in  Spanish, 
besides  more  or  less  in  Nahuatl,  written  during  the 
century  following  the  conquest,  and  the  devoted 
missionaries  and  painstaking  administrators,  who 
wrote  books  about  the  country  in  which  they  were 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


103 


working,  were  not  enp^aged  in  a  wholesale  conspir- 
acy for  deceiving  mankind.  From  a  really  critical 
stndy  of  this  literature,  combined  with  archaeolog- 
ical investigation,  much  may  be  expecjted  ;  and  a 
noble  beginning  has  already  been  m:ide.  A  more 
extensive  acquaintance  with  Mexican  literature 
would  at  times  have  materially  modified  Mr.  Mor- 
gan's conclusions,  though  without  altering  their 
general  tlrift.  At  this  poi 'vt  the  work 
has  been  taken  up  by  Mr.  Adolf  Bande-  deiiei  'a  re- 
lier,  of  Highland,  Illinois,  to  whose  rare  * 

sagacity  and  untiring  industry  as  a  field  archaeol- 
ogist is  joined  such  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
Mexican  literature  as  few  men  before  him  have 
possessed.  Armed  with  such  resources,  Mr.  Ban- 
delier  is  doing  for  the  ancient  history  of  Amer- 
ica work  as  significant  as  that  which  Mommsen 
has  done  for  lionie,  or  Baur  for  the  beginnings 
of  Christianity.  When  a  sufficient  mass  of  facts 
and  incidents  have  once  been  put  upon  record,  it 
is  hard  for  ignorant  misconception  to  bury  the 
truth  in  a  pit  so  deep  but  that  the  delving  genius 
of  critical  scholarship  will  sooner  or  later  drag  it 
forth  into  the  light  of  day.^ 

At  this  point  in  our  exposition  a  very  concise 
simimary  of  Mr.  Bandelier's  results  will  suffice  to 

1  A  summary  of  Mr.  Bandelier's  principal  results,  with  copious 
citation  and  discussion  of  original  Spanish  and  Nahuatl  sources,  is 
contained  in  his  three  papers,  "  On  the  art  of  war  and  mode  of 
warfare  of  the  ancient  Mexicans,"  —  "On  the  distribution  ;ind 
tenure  of  land,  and  the  customs  with  respect  to  inheritance, 
among  the  ancient  Mexicans,"  —  "  On  the  social  organization  and 
mode  of  government  of  the  ancient  Mexicans,"  Peahody  Museum 
Reports,  vol.  ii.,  1876-79,  pp.  IJo-KU,  385-^14-',  iJ57-C9J. 


104  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

enable  the  reader  to  iinderatand  their  import. 
What  has  been  called  the  ''  enij)ire  of  Monte- 
znnia  "  was  in  reality  a  eoiifcHlerac^y  of  three  tribes, 
the  Aztecs,  Tezcncans,  and  Tlacoi)ans,i  dwellinf:^  in 
three  large  comi)osite  pueblos  situated  very  near 
together  in  one  of  the  strongest  defensive  po- 
Tiie  Aztfic  sitions  ever  occupied  by  Indians.  Tlii:; 
confederacy,  ^ztcc  Confederacy  extended  its  "  sway  '' 
over  a  considerable  portion  of  the  Mexican  i)e- 
iiinsula,  but  that  "  sway  "  could  not  correctly  be 
described  as  "  empire,"  for  it  was  in  no  sense  a 
military  occupation  of  the  country.  The  confeder- 
acy did  not  have  garrisons  in  subject  pueblos 
or  civil  officials  to  administer  their  affairs  for 
them.  It  simjdy  sent  some  of  its  chiefs  about 
from  one  pueblo  to  another  to  collect  tribute. 
This  tax  consisted  in  great  part  of  maize  and 
other  food,  and  each  tributary  pueblo  reserved  a 
certain  portion  of  its  tribal  territory  to  be  culti- 
vated for  the  benefit  of  the  domineering  confed- 
eracy. If  a  pueblo  proved  delinquent  or  recalci- 
trant, Aztec  warriors  swooped  down  upon  it  in 
stealthy  midnight  assault,  butchered  its  inhab- 
itants and  emptied  its  grana.les,  and  when  the 
paroxysm  of  rage  had  sjient  itself,  went  exidting 
homeward,  carrying  away  women  for  concubines, 

^  In  the  Iroquois  confederacy  tlio  Mohawks  enjoyed  a  certain 
precedence  or  seniority,  the  Onondagaa  had  the  central  council- 
fire,  and  the  Senecas,  who  had  the  two  head  war-chiefs,  were 
much  the  most  numerous.  In  the  Mexican  confederacy  the  va- 
rious points  of  superiority  seem  to  have  been  more  concentrated 
in  the  Aztecs ;  but  spoils  and  tribute  were  divided  into  five  por- 
tions, of  whicli  Mexico  and  Tezcuco  each  took  two,  and  Tlucopan 
one. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


105 


men  to  be  sacrificed,  und  hucIi  niiscclliinerns  booty 
as  could  be  conveyed  without  wii^^ons  oi*  Ixiists  to 
draw  tlieni.^  If  the  sudden  assault,  witli  scaling; 
ladders,  happened  to  fail,  the  assailants  were  likely 
to  be  battled,  for  there  was  no  artillery,  and  so  lit- 
tle food  could  be  carried  that  a  siege  meant  starva- 
tion for  the  besiegers. 

The  trib.itary  j)ueblos  were  also  liable  to  be 
summoned  to  furnish  a  contingent  of  warriors  to 
the  war-parties  of  the  confederacy,  under  the  same 
jjenalties  for  delinquency  as  in  the  case  of  refusal 
of  tribute.  In  such  cases  it  was  quite  common  for 
the  confederacy  to  issue  a  peremptory  summons, 
followed  by  a  declaration  of  war.  When  a  pueblo 
was  captured,  the  only  way  in  which  the  van- 
quished people  could  stop  the  massacre  was  by 
holding  out  signals  of  submission ;  a  parley  then 
sometimes  adjusted  the  att'air,  and  the  payment  of 
a  year's  tribute  in  advance  induced  the  conquerors 
to  depart,  but  captives  once  taken  could  seldom 
if  ever  be  ransomed.  If  the  parties  coidd  not 
agi'ee  upon  terms,  the  slaughter  was  renewed,  and 
sometimes  went  on  until  the  dei)arting  victors  left 
nought  behind  them  but  ruined  houses  belching 
from  loop-hole  and  doorway  lurid  clouds  of  smoke 
and  flame  upon  narrow  silent  streets  heaped  up 
with  mangled  corpses. 

The  sway  of  the  Aztec  confederacy  over  the 
Mexican  peninsula  was  thus  essentially  similar  to 
the  sway  of  the  Iroquois  confederacy  over  a  great 
part  of  the  tribes  between  the  Connecticut  river 

^  The  wretched  prisoners  were  ordinarily  compelled  to  carry 
the  booty. 


106 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


and  the  Mississippi.  It  was  simply  the  levying  of 
tribute,  —  a  system  of  plunder  enforced  by  terror. 
The  so-called  empire  was  "only  a  partnership 
formed  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  on  the  busi- 
ness of  warfare,  and  that  intended,  not  for  the  ex- 
tension of  territorial  ownership,  but  only  for  an 
increase  of  the  means  of  subsistence."  ^  There 
was  none  of  that  coalcscenuc;  <iud  incorporation  of 
peoples  which  occurs  after  the  change  from  gen- 
tilism  to  civil  society  has  been  effected.  Among 
the  Mexicans,  as  elsewhere  throughout  North 
America,  the  tribe  remained  intact  as  the  highest 
completed  political  integer. 

The  Aztec  tribe  was  organized  in  clans  and 
phratries,  and  the  number  of  clans 
would  indicate  that  the  tribe  was  a  very 
large  one.^  There  were  twenty  clans,  called  in  the 
Nahuatl  language  "  calpuUis."  We  may  fairly 
suppose  that  the  average  size  of  a  clan  was  larger 

1  Bandelier,  op.  cit.  p.  563. 

^  The  notion  of  an  immense  population  groaning-  nnder  the 
lash  of  taskmasters,  and  building  liuge  palaces  for  idle  despots 
must  be  dismissed.  The  statements  which  refer  to  such  a  vast 
population  are  apt  to  be  accompanied  by  incompatible  state- 
ments. Mr.  MorgaTi  is  right  in  throwing  the  burden  of  proof 
upon  tliose  who  maintain  that  a  people  witliout  domestic  animals 
or  field  agriculture  could  have  been  so  numerous  {Anc.  Soc,  p. 
19.5).  On  the  other  hand,  I  believe  Mr.  Morgan  makes  a  grave 
mistake  in  the  opposite  direction,  in  underestimating  the  numbers 
that  could  be  supported  upon  Indian  corn  even  under  a  system  of 
horticulture  without  the  use  of  the  plough.  Some  pertinent  re- 
marks on  the  extraordinary  reproductive  power  of  m.aize  in  Mex- 
ico maybe  found  in  Humboldt,  Essai politique  sm-  la  Nouvtlle 
Eaparine,  Paris,  1811,  tom.  iii.  pp.  51-00  ;  the  great  naturalist  is 
of  course  speaking  of  the  yield  of  maize  in  ploughed  lands,  but, 
after  making  due  allowances,  the  yield  under  the  ancient  system 
must  have  been  wellnigh  unexampled  in  barbaric  agriculture. 


Aztec  clans. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


107 


than  the  average  tribe  of  Algonquins  or  Iroquois ; 
but;  owing  to  the  compact  "  city  "  life,  this  increase 
of  numbers  did  not  result  in  segmentation  and 
scattering,  as  among  Indians  in  the  lower  status. 
Each  Aztec  clan  seems  to  have  occupied  a  number 
of  adjacent  communal  hou  es,  forming  a  kind  of 
precinct,  with  its  special  house  or  houses  for  offi- 
cial purposes,  corresponding  to  the  estvfas  in  the 
New  Mexican  pueblos.  The  houses  were  the  com- 
mon property  of  the  clan,  and  so  was  the  land 
which  its  members  cultivated ;  and  such  houses 
and  land  could  not  be  sold  or  bartered  away  by 
the  clan,  or  in  anywise  alienated.  The  idea  of 
"  real  estate  "  had  not  been  developed ;  the  clan 
simply  exercised  a  right  of  occupancy,  and  —  as 
among  some  ruder  Indians  —  its  individual  mem- 
bers exercised  certain  limited  rights  of  user  in 
particular  garden-plots. 

The  clan  was  governed  by  a  clan  council,  consist- 
ing of  chiefs  (tecuhtl'i)  elected  by  the  clan,  and 
inducted  into  office  after  a  cruel  religious  ordeal, 
in  which  the  candidate  was  bruised,  tortured,  and 
half  starved.    An  executive  department 

1         1       A' IS  j.'iii"  ji         Clan  officers. 

was  more  clearly  ditterentiated  from  the 
council  than  among  the  Indians  of  the  lower  sta- 
tus. The  clan  (calpulli)  had  an  official  head,  or 
sachem,  called  the  calj)ullec  ;  and  also  a  military 
commander  called  the  ahcacautin^  or  "  elder 
brother."  The  ahcacautin  was  also  a  kind  of 
peace  officer,  or  constable,  for  the  precinct  occupied 
by  the  clan,  and  carried  about  with  him  a  staff  of 
office  ;  a  tuft  of  white  feathers  attached  to  this 
stafE  betokened  that  his  errand  was  one  of  death. 


108 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


The  clan  elected  its  caljndlcc  and  ahcacautln,  and 
could  depose  them  for  cause.^  , 

The  members  of  the  clan  were  reciprocally 
boimd  to  aid,  defend,  and  avenge  one  another ;  but 
wergild  was  no  longer  accepted,  and  the  penalty 
for  murder  was  death.  The  clan  exercised  the 
right  of  naming  its  members.  Such  names  were 
invariably  significant  (as  NezahualcoyotU  "  Hungry 
Coyote,"  Axayacatl,  "  Face-in-the- Water,"  etc.), 
and  more  or  less  "  medicine,"  or  super- 

RiRlitsand  .   .  .      .  i      i  i 

duties  of  the     stitious  asiociation,  was  attached  to  the 

elan.  W 

name.  The  clans  also  had  their  signifi- 
cant names  and  totems.  Each  clan  had  its  pecul- 
iar religious  rites,  its  priests  or  medicine-men  who 
were  members  of  the  clan  council,  and  its  temple 
or  medicine-house.  Instead  of  burying  their  dead 
the  Mexican  tribes  practised  cremation  ;  there  was, 
therefore,  no  common  cemetery,  but  the  funeral 
ceremonies  were  conducted  by  the  clan. 

The  clans  of  the  Aztecs,  like  those  of  many 
other  Mexican  tribes,  were  organized  into  four 
phratries ;  and  this  divided  the  city  of  Mexico, 
Aztec  phra-  ^^  ^^^  Spaniards  at  once  remarked,  into 
triee.  f^^jp   quarters.      The   phratry   had   ac- 

quired more  functions  than  it  possessed  in  the 
lower  status.  Besides  certain  religious  and  social 
duties,  and  besides  its  connection  with  the  punish- 
ment of  criminals,  the  Mexican  phratry  was  an 
organization    for   military   purposes.^      The   four 


^  Compare  this  description  with  that  of  the  institutions  of  In- 
dians in  the  lower  status,  above,  p.  6!>. 

^  In  this  respect  it  seems  to  have  h.ad  some  resemblance  to  the 
Boman  centuria  and  Teutonic  hundred.    So  in  prehistoric  Greece 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


109 


phratries  were  four  divisions  of  the  tribal  host, 
each  with  its  captain.  In  each  of  the  quarters 
was  an  arsenal,  or  "  dart-house,"  where  weapons 
were  stored,  and  from  which  they  were  handed  out 
to  war-parties  about  to  start  on  an  expedition. 

The  supreme  government  of  the  Aztecs  was 
vested  in  the  tribal  council  composed  xho  tribal 
of  twenty  members,  one  for  each  clan.  <=''""*^'i- 
The  member,  representing  a  clan,  was  not  its  cal- 
pullec^  or  "  sachem ;  "  he  was  one  of  the  tecuhtli, 
or  clan-chiefs,  and  was  significantly  called  the 
"  speaker  "  (tlatoani).  The  tribal  council,  thus 
composed  of  twenty  speakers,  was  called  the  tlcv- 
tocan,  or  "  place  of  speech."  ^  At  least  as  often 
as  once  in  ten  days  the  council  assembled  at  the 
tecpan,  or  official  house  of  the  tribe,  but  it  could 
be  convened  whenever  occasion  required,  and  in 
cases  of  emergency  was  continually  in  session.  Its 
powers  and  duties  were  similar  to  those  of  an  an- 
cient English  shiremote,  in  so  far  as  they  were 
partly  directive  and  partly  judicial.  A  large  part 
of  its  business  was  settling  disputes  between  the 

we  may  perhaps  infer  from  Nestor's  advice  to  Agamemnon  that  a 

similar  organization  existed :  — 

KpTv'  &vSpas  Karii  (pC\a,  /carck  ^fy'iTpas,  'Ayifiefivoj/, 
&s  (pp-firprj  (pp-f)pTTi(piv  ap-fiyrj,  <pv\a  Se  (pv\ois. 

Iliad,  ii.  362. 

But  the  phratry  seems  never  to  have  reached  so  liigli  a  develop. 

ment  among  the  Greeks  as  among  the  Romans  and  the  early 

English. 

^  Compare  parliament   from  parler.     These  twenty  were  the 

"  grandees,"  "  counsellors,"  and  "  captains  "  mentioned  by  Bernal 

Diaz  as  always  in   Montezuma's   company  ;    "  y  siempre  A  la 

contina  est.iban  en  su  compaflia  veinte  grandes  seilores  y  consejeros 

y  capitanes,"  etc.    Historia  verdadera,  ii.  U5.    See  Baudelier,  op, 

cit.  p.  640. 


110 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


clans.  It  superintended  the  ceremonies  of  inves- 
titure with  which  the  chiefs  and  other  officers 
of  the  clans  were  sworn  into  office.  At  intervals 
of  eighty  days  there  was  an  "  extra  session  "  of 
the  tlatocan,  attended  also  by  the  twenty  "  elder 
brothers,"  the  four  phratry-captains,  the  two  exec- 
utive chiefs  of  the  tribe,  and  the  leading  priests, 
and  at  such  times  a  reconsideration  of  an  unpopu- 
lar decision  might  be  urged  ;  but  the  authority  of 
the  tlatocan  was  supreme,  and  from  its  final  deci- 
sion there  could  be  no  appeal.^ 

The  executive  chiefs  of  the  tribe  were  two  in 
number,  as  was  commonly  the  case  in  ancient 
America.  The  tribal  sachem,  or  civil  executive, 
bore  the  grotesque  title  of  cihuacoatl,  or  "  snake- 
The"  snake-  womau."  ^  His  relation  to  the  tribe 
woman."  ^^g  jj^  general  like  that  of  the  calpul- 
lec  to  the  clan.  He  executed  the  decrees  of  the 
tribal  council,  of  which  he  was  ex  officio  a  mem- 
ber, and  was  responsible  for  the  housing  of  tribute 
and  its  proper  distribution  among  the  clans. 
He  was  also  chief  judge,  and  he  was  lieutenant 
to  the  head  war-chief   in  command  of  the  tribal 


^  Mr.  Bandolier's  note  on  this  point  gives  an  especially  apt 
illustration  of  the  confusion  of  ideas  and  inconsistencies  of  state- 
ment amid  which  the  early  Spanish  writers  struggled  to  under- 
stand and  describe  this  strange  society  :  op.  cit.  p.  G51. 

2  In  Aztec  mythology  Cihuacoatl  was  wife  of  the  supreme 
night  deity,  Tezcatlipoca.  Squier,  Serpent  Symbol  in  Atnerica,  pp. 
159-1(36,  174-183.  On  the  connection  between  serpent  worship 
and  human  sacrifices,  see  Fergusson's  Tree  and  Serpent  Worship, 
pp.  3-5,  38-41.  Much  evidence  as  to  American  serpent  worship 
is  collected  in  J.  Q.  Miiller's  Geschichte  der  amerikanischen  Urre- 
ligionen,  Basel,  1855.  The  hieroglyphic  emblem  of  the  Aztes 
tribal  sachem  was  a  female  head  surmounted  by  a  snake. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


Ill 


host.^    He  was  elected  for  life  ov  the  tribal  council, 
which  could  depose  him  for  misconduct. 

The  office  of  head  war-chief  was  an  instance  of 
primitive  royalty  in  a  tery  interesting  stage  of 
development.  The  title  of  this  officer  was  tlaca- 
tecuhtli,  or  "  chief -of- men."  2  He  was  primarily 
head  war-chief  of  the  Aztec  tribe,  but  about  1430 
became  supreme  military  commander  of  Tiie  "  chief-of 
the  three  confederate  tribes,  so  that  his  ™^"' 
office  was  one  of  peculiar  dignity  ftnd  impor- 
tance. When  the  Spaniards  arrived  upon  the 
scene  Montezuma  was  tlacatecuhtl%  and  they  nat- 
urally called  him  "  king."  To  understand  pre- 
cisely how  far  such  an  epithet  could  correctly  be 
applied  to  him,  and  how  far  it  was  misleading,  we 
must  recall  the  manner  in  which  early  kingship 
arose  in  Europe.  The  Eoman  rex  was  an  officer 
elected  for  life  ;  the  typical  Greek  hasileus  was 
a  somewhat  more  fully  developed  king,  inasmuch 
as  his  office  was  becoming  practically  hereditary ; 
otherwise  rex  was  about  equivalent  to  Evolution  of 
hasileus.  Alike  in  Rome  and  in  Greece  orelce  auS 
the  king  had  at  least  three  great  func-  ^°™®* 
tions,  and  possibly  four.^     He  was,  primarily,  chief 

^  Other  tribes  besides  the  Aztec  had  the  "snake-woman."  In 
the  city  of  Mexico  tlie  Spaniards  mistook  him  for  a  "  second- 
king,"  or  "  royal  lieutenant."  In  other  towns  they  regarded  him, 
somewhat  more  correctly,  as  "governor,"  and  called  him  goher- 
nador,  — a  title  still  applied  to  the  tribal  sachem  of  the  pneblo 
Indians,  as  e.  g.  in  Zuiii  heretofore  mentioned  ;  dee  above  p.  80. 

'^  This  title  seems  precisely  equivalent  to  &va^  ivSpSiv,  com- 
monly applied  to  Agamemnon,  and  sometimes  to  other  chieftains, 
in  the  Iliad. 

^  Ramsay's  Roman  Antiquities,  p.  04 ;  Hermann's  Political 
Antiquities  of  Greece,  p.  105 ;  Morgan,  Anc.  Sac,  p.  248. 


w 


112 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA, 


commander,  secondly,  chief  priest,  thirdly,  chief 
judge  ;  whether  he  had  reached  the  fourth  stage 
and  added  the  functions  of  chief  civil  executive, 
is  matter  of  disj)ute.  Kingship  in  Rome  and  in 
most  Greek  cities  was  overthrown  at  so  early  a 
date  that  some  questions  of  this  sort  are  difficult 
to  settle.  But  in  all  probability  the  office  grew 
up  through  the  successive  acquisition  of  ritual, 
judicial,  and  civil  functions  by  the  military  com- 
mander. The  paramount  necessity  of  consulting 
the  tutelar  deities  before  fighting  resulted  in  mak- 
ing the  general  a  priest  competent  to  perform 
sacrifices  and  interpret  omens ;  ^  he  thus  naturally 
became  the  moSt  important  among  priests  ;  an  in- 
creased sanctity  invested  his  person  and  office; 
and  by  and  by  he  acquired  control  over  the  dispen- 
sation of  justice,  and  finally  over  the  whole  civil 
administration.  One  step  more  was  needed  to 
develop  the  hasileus  into  a  despot,  like  the  king 
of  Persia,  and  that  was  to  let  him  get  into  his 
hands  the  law-making  power,  involving  complete 
control  over  taxation.  When  the  Greeks  and  Ro- 
mans became  dissatisfied  with  the  increasing  pow- 
ers of  their  kings,  they  destroyed  the  office.     The 

^  Such  would  naturally  result  from  the  desirableness  of  secur- 
ing unity  of  command.  If  Demosthenes  had  been  in  sole  com- 
niand  of  the  Athenian  armament  in  the  harbour  of  Syracuse,  and 
had  been  a  hasileus,  with  priestly  authority,  who  can  doubt  that 
some  such  theory  of  the  eclipse  as  that  suggested  by  Pliiloclionis 
would  have  been  adopted,  and  thus  one  of  the  world's  great 
tragedies  averted  ?  See  Grote,  Hist.  Greece,  vol.  vii.  chap.  Ix. 
M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  in  his  admirable  book  La  CiU  antique, 
pp.  205-'^  10,  makes  the  priestly  function  of  the  king  primitive, 
and  the  -military  function  secondary ;  which  is  entirely  inconsist* 
ent  with  what  we  know  of  barbarous  races. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


113 


Romans  did  not  materially  diminish  its  functions, 
but  put  them  into  commission,  by  entrusting  them 
to  two  consuls  of  equal  authority  elected  annually. 
The  Greeks,  on  the  other  hand,  divided  the  royal 
functions  among  different  officers,  as  e.  g.  at  Ath- 
ens among  the  nine  archons.^ 

The  typical  kingship  in  mediaeval  Europe,  after 
the  full  development  of  the  feudal  system,  was 
very  different  indeed  from  the  kingship  in  early 
Greece  and  Rome.  In  the  Middle  Ages  Medtevai 
all  priestly  functions  had  passed  into  ^^Bsiup. 
the  hands  of  the  Church.^  A  king  like  Charles 
VII.  of  France,  or  Edward  III.  of  England,  was 
military  commander,  civil  magistrate,  chief  judge, 
and  supreme  landlord ;  the  people  were  his  ten- 
ants. That  was  the  kind  of  king  with  which  the 
Spanish  discoverers  of  Mexico  were  familiar. 

Now  the  Mexican  tlacatecuhtl^  or  "chief-of- 
men,"  was  much  more  like  Agamemnon  in  point 
of  kingship  than  like  Edward  III.  He  was  not 
supreme  landlord,  for  landlordship  did  not  exist 
in  Mexico.     He  was  not  chief  judge  or  civil  mag- 

1  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  archon  who  retained  the  priestly 
function  was  called  hasileus,  showing  perhaps  that  at  that  time 
this  had  come  to  be  most  prominent  among  the  royal  functions, 
or  more  likely  that  it  was  the  one  with  which  reformers  had  some 
religious  scruples  about  interfering.  The  Romans,  too,  retained 
part  of  the  king's  priestly  function  in  an  officer  called  rex  sacro- 
rum,  vhose  duty  was  at  times  to  offer  a  sacrifice  in  the  forum, 
and  then  run  away  as  fast  as  legs  could  carry  him,  —  V  S'5(ros  6 
&a<TL\ehs,  Karh.  rdxoi  &irei(n  <peiywv  e'l  ayopas  (!)  Plutarch,  Qucest. 
Born.  03. 

2  Something  of  the  priestly  quality  of  "sanctity,"  however, 
surrounded  the  king's  person  ;  and  the  ceremony  of  anointing 
the  king  at  his  coronation  was  a  survival  of  the  ancient  rite  which 
invested  the  head  war-chief  with  priestly  attributes. 


1 


114 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


istrate ;  those  functions  belonged  to  the  "  snake- 
woman."     Mr.   Bandelier  regards  the  "  chief-of- 
men "  as  simply  a  military  commander ;  but  for 
reasons  which  1  shall  state  hereafter,^  it 

Montezuma  •,        i  j^i     .   i  •       t 

wag  a  "  priest-  sccms  quitc  clcar  that  he  exercised  cer- 
tain very  important  priestly  functions, 
although  beside  him  there  was  a  kind  of  high- 
priest  or  medicine-chief.  If  I  am  right  in  hold- 
ing that  Montezuma  was  a  "priest-commander," 
then  incipient  royalty  in  Mexico  had  advanced 
at  least  one  stage  beyond  the  head  war-chief  of 
tne  Iroquois,  and  remained  one  stage  beliind  the 
hasileus  of  the  Homeric  Greeks. 

The  tlacatecuhtli,  or  "  chief-of-men,"  was  elected 
by  an  assembly  consisting  of  the  tribal  council, 
the  "  elder  brothers  "  of  the  several  clans,  and  cer- 
tain leading  priests.     Though  the  office  was  thus 
elective,  the  choice  seems  to  have  been 

Mode  of  sue-  j«ni««iii  i«i  i 

cession  to  the  practically  limited  to  a  particular  clan, 
and  in  the  eleven  chiefs  who  were 
chosen  from  1375  to  1520  a  certain  principle  or 
custom  of  succession  seems  to  be  plainly  indi- 
cated.^ There  was  a  further  limit  to  the  order  of 
succession.  Allusion  has  been  made  to  the  four 
phratry-captains  commanding  the  quarters  of  the 

^  They  can  be  most  conveniently  stated  in  connection  -with  the 
story  of  the  conquest  of  Mexico  ;  see  below,  vol.  ii.  p.  278.  When 
Mr.  Bandelier  completes  his  long-promised  paper  on  the  ancient 
Mexican  religion,  perhaps  it  will  appear  that  he  has  taken  these 
facts  into  the  account. 

2  I  cannot  follow  Mr.  Bandelier  in  discrediting  Clavigero's 
statement  that  the  office  of  tlacatecuhtli  "  should  always  remain 
in  the  house  of  Acamapitzin,"  inasmuch  as  the  eleven  who  were 
actually  elected  were  all  closely  akin  to  one  another.  In  point  of 
fact  it  did  remain  '*  iu  the  house  of  Acamapitzin." 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


115 


city.  Their  cheerful  titles  were  "man  of  the 
house  of  darts,"  "  cutter  of  men,"  "  blooclshedder," 
and  "  chief  of  the  eagle  and  cactus."  These  cap- 
tains were  military  chiefs  of  the  phratries,  and  also 
magistrates  charged  with  the  duty  of  maintain- 
ing order  and  enforcing  the  decrees  of  the  council 
in  their  respective  quarters.  The  "  chief  of  the 
eagle  and  cactus  "  was  chief  executioner,  —  Jack 
Ketch.  He  was  not  eligible  for  the  office  of 
"  chief-of-men  ; "  the  three  other  phratry-captains 
were  eligible.  Then  there  was  a  member  of  the 
priesthood  entitled  "  man  of  the  dark  house." 
This  person,  with  the  three  eligible  captains,  made 
a  quartette,  and  one  of  this  privileged  four  must 
succeed  to  the  office  of  "  chief-of-men." 

The  eligibility  of  the  "  inan  of  the  dark  house  " 
may  be  cited  here  as  positive  proof  that  some- 
times the  "chief-of-men"  could  be  a  "priest-com- 
mander." That  in  all  cases  he  acquired  priestly 
functions  after  election,  even  when  he  did  not 
possess  them  before,  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
at  the  ceremony  of  his  induction  into  office  he 
ascended  to  the  summit  of  the  pyi'amid  sacred 
to  the  war-god  Huitzilopochtli,  where  he  was 
anointed  by  the  high-priest  with  a  black  ointment, 
and  sprinkled  with  sanctified  water ;  having  thus 
become  consecrated  he  took  a  censer  of  live  coals 
and  a  bag  of  copal,  and  as  his  first  official  act 
offered  incense  to  the  war-god.^ 

^  H.  H.  Bancroft,  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  States,  vol.  ii.  p. 
14:5.  Hencejhe  accounts  of  the  reverent  demeanour  of  the  peo- 
ple toward  Montezuma,  though  perhaps  overcoloured,  are  not 
so  absurd  as  Mr.  Morgan  deemed  them.  Mr.  Morgan  was  some- 
times too  anxious  to  reduce  Montezuma  to  the  level  of  an  Itck 
quois  war-chief. 


116 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


As  the  "chief -of -men"  was  elected,  so  too  he 
could  be  de})osed  for  misbehaviour.  He  was  ex 
officio  a  member  of  the  ti'ibal  council,  and  he  had 
his  official  residence  in  the  tecjmn,  or  tribal  house, 
where  the  meetings  of  the  council  were  held,  and 
where  the  hospitalities  of  the  tribe  were  extended 
to  strangers.  As  an  administrative  officer,  the 
"  chief-of -men  "  had  little  to  do  within  the  limits 
of  the  tribe ;  that,  as  already  observed,  was  the 
business  of  the  "  snake-woman."  But  outside  of 
the  confederacy  the  "chief -of -men  "  exercised  ad- 
ministrative functions.  He  superintended  the  col- 
lection of  tribute.  Each  of  the  three  confederate 
Manner  of  col-  ti'ibcs  appointed,  tlirough  its  tribal 
looting  tribute,  couucil,  agcuts  to  visit  the  subjected 
pueblos  and  gather  in  the  tribute.  These  agents 
were  expressively  termed  calpixqui,  "  crop-gather- 
ers." As  these  men  were  obliged  to  spend  con- 
siderable time  in  the  vanquished  pueblos  in  the 
double  character  of  tax-collectors  and  spies,  we 
can  imagine  how  hateful  their  position  was.  Their 
security  from  injury  depended  upon  the  reputation 
of  their  tribes  for  ruthless  ferocity.^  The  tiger- 
like confederacy  was  only  too  ready  to  take  of- 
fence ;  in  the  lack  of  a  decent  pretext  it  often 
went  to  war  without  one,  simply  in  order  to  get 
human  vie.  ms  for  sacrifice. 

Once  appointed,  the  tax-gatherers  were  directed 

*  As  I  have  elsewhere  observed  in  a  similar  case :  —  "  Each 
summer  there  came  two  Mohawk  elders,  secure  in  tlie  dread  that 
Iiocinois  prowess  had  everywhere  inspired  ;  and  up  and  down  the 
Connecticut  valley  they  seized  the  tribute  of  weapons  and  wam- 
pum, and  proclaimed  the  last  liarsh  edict  issued  from  the  savaga 
council  at  Onondaga."    Beginnings  of  New  England,  p.  121. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


117 


by  the  "chief- of -men."  The  tribute  was  chiefly 
maize,  but  might  be  anything  the  conquerors 
chose  to  demand,  —  weapons,  fine  pottery  or 
featherwork,  gold  ornaments,  or  female  slaves. 
Sometimes  the  tributary  pueblo,  instead  of  sacri- 
ficing all  its  prisoners  of  war  upon  its  own  altars, 
sent  some  of  them  up  to  Mexico  as  part  of  its  trib- 
ute. The  ravening  maw  of  the  horrible  deities 
was  thus  appeased,  not  by  the  pueblo  that  paid 
the  blackmail,  but  by  the  power  that  extorted  it, 
and  thus  the  latter  obtained  a  larger  share  of  di- 
vine favour.  Generally  the  unhappy  prisoners 
were  forced  to  carry  the  corn  and  other  articles. 
They  were  convoyed  by  couriers  who  saw  that 
everything  was  properly  delivered  at  the  tecpan, 
and  also  brought  information  by  word  of  mouth 
and  by  picture-writing  from  the  calpixqui  to  the 
"  chief-of -men."  When  the  newly-arrived  Span- 
iards saw  these  couriers  coming  and  going  they 
fancied  that  they  were  "  ambassadors."  This  sys- 
tem of  tribute-taking  made  it  necessary  to  build 
roads,  and  this  in  turn  facilitated,  not  only  military 
operations,  but  trade,  which  had  already  made  some 
progress  albeit  of  a  simple  sort.  These  "  roads  " 
might  perhaps  more  properly  be  called  Indian 
trails,^  but  they  served  their  purpose. 

The  general  similarity  of  the  Aztec  confederacy 

^  See  Salmeron's  letter  of  August  13,  1531,  to  the  Council  of 
the  Indies,  cited  in  Bandelier,  op.  cit.  p.  (390.  The  letter  recom- 
mends that  to  increase  the  security  of  the  Spanish  hold  upon  the 
country  the  roads  should  be  made  practicable  for  beasts  and 
wagons.  They  were  narrow  pa  running  straight  ahead  up  hill 
and  down  dale,  sometimes  crosoi^ig  narrow  ravines  upon  heavy 
stone  culverts. 


118  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

to  that  of  the  Iroquois,  in  point  of  social  structure, 
is  thus  clearly  manifest.  Along  with  this  general 
Altec  and  iro-  similarity  we  have  observed  some  points 
^Jlillkrcou-*^'  of  higher  development,  such  as  one 
trahted.  might  cxpcct  to  find  in  traversing  the 

entire  length  of  an  ethnical  period.  Instead  of 
stockaded  villages,  with  houses  of  bark  or  of  clay 
supported  upon  a  wooden  framework,  we  have 
pueblos  of  adobe-brick  or  stone,  in  various  stages 
of  evolution,  the  most  advanced  of  which  present 
the  appearance  of  castellated  cities.  Along  with 
the  systematic  irrigation  and  increased  dependence 
upon  horticidture,  we  find  evidences  of  greater 
density  of  population ;  and  we  see  in  the  victo- 
rious confederacy  a  more  highly  developed  organi- 
zation for  adding  to  its  stock  of  food  and  other 
desirable  possessions  by  the  systematic  plunder 
of  neighbouring  weaker  communities.  Naturally 
such  increase  in  numbers  and  organization  entails 
some  increase  in  the  number  of  officers  and  some 
differentiation  of  their  functions,  as  illustrated  in 
the  representation  of  the  clans  (calpuUi)  in  the 
tribal  council  (tlatocan),  by  speakers  (tlatoani) 
chosen  for  the  purpose,  and  not  by  the  official 
heads  (calpullec)  of  the  clan.  Likewise  in  thci 
military  commander-in-chief  (tlacatecuhtl'i)  we 
observe  a  marked  increase  in  dignity,  and  —  as  1 
have  already  suggested  and  hope  to  maintain  —  w€^ 
find  that  his  office  has  been  clothed  with  sacerdo- 
tal powers,  and  has  thus  taken  a  decided  step  to- 
ward kingship  of  the  ancient  type,  as  depicted  in 
the  Homeric  poems. 

No  feature  of  the  advance  is  more  noteworthy 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


119 


than  the  devolopment  of  the  medicine-men  into  an 
orifanized  priesthood.^     The  presence  of 

,  ?  .        ,  ,  ,    .  .         1  Aztec  prie»t. 

this  priesthood  and  its  ritual  was  pro-  »'oo.i :  human 
claimed  to  the  eyes  of  the  traveller  in 
ancient  Mexico  by  the  numerous  tall  truncated 
pyramids  (teocaUis)^  on  the  flat  summits  of  which 
men,  women,  and  children  were  sacrificed  to  the 
gods.  This  custom  of  human  sacrifice  seems  to 
have  been  a  characteristic  of  the  middle  period 
of  barbarism,  and  to  have  survived,  with  dimin- 
ishing frequency,  into  the  upper  period.  There 
are  abundant  traces  of  its  .existence  throughout 
the  early  Aryan  world,  from  Britain  to  Hindu- 
stan, as  well  as  among  the  ancient  Hebrews  and 
their  kindred.'^  But  among  all  these  peoples,  at 
the  earliest  times  at  which  we  can  study  them 
witli  trustworthy  records,  we  find  the  custom  of 
human  sacrifice  in  an  advanced  stage  of  decline, 
and  generally  no  longer  accompanied  by  the  cus- 
tom of  cannibalism  in  which  it  probably  origi- 
nated.^ Among  the  Mexicans,  however,  when  they 
were  first  visited  by  the  Spaniards,  cannibalism 
flourished  as  nowhere  else  in  the  world  except 
perhaps  in  Fiji,  and  human  sacrifices  were  con- 

1  The  priesthood  was  not  hereditary,  nor  did  it  form  a  caste. 
There  was  no  hereditary  nobility  in  ancient  Mexico,  nor  were 
there  any  hereditary  vocations,  as  "artisans,"  "  merchants,"  etc. 
See'Bandelier,  op.  cit.  p.  599. 

2  See  the  copious  references  in  Tylor's  Primitive  Culture,  ii. 
340-371 ;  Mackay,  Religious  Development  of  the  Greeks  and  He- 
brews, ii.  40()-4;}4;  Oort  and  Hooykaas,  The  Bible  for  Joung 
People,  i.  30,  189-193 ;  ii.  102,  220 ;  iii.  21,  170,  316,  393,  395 ;  iv. 
85,  220.  Ghillany,  Die  Menschenopfer  der  alten  Ilebrder,  Nureto- 
berg-,  1842,  treats  the  subject  with  much  learning. 

*  Spencer,  Princip.  Sociol.,  i.  287 ;  Tylor,  op.  cit.  ii.  345. 


120  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMEBIC  A. 

ducted  on  sucli  a  scale  as  could  not  have  been 
witnessed  in  Europe  without  going  back  more 
than  forty  centuries. 

The  custom  of  sacrificing  captives  to  the  gods 
was  a  marked  advance  upon  the  practice  in  the 
lower  period  of  barbarism,  when  the  prisoner,  un- 
less saved  by  adoption  into  the  tribe  of  his  cap» 
tors,  was  put  to  death  with  lingering  torments. 
There  were  occasions  on  which  the  Aztecs  tortured 
their  prisoners  before  sending  them  to  the  altar,i 
but  in  general  the  prisoner  was  well-treated  and 
highly  fed,  —  fatted,  in  short,  for  the  final  ban- 
quet in  which  the  worshippers  participated  with 
their  savage  deity .^  In  a  more  advanced  stage 
of  development  than  that  which  the  Aztecs  had 
reached,  in  the  stage  when  agriculture  became 
extensive  enough  to  create  a  steady  demand  for 
servile  labour,  the  practice  of  enslaving  prisoners 
became  general ;  and  as  slaves  became  more  and 
more  valuable,  men  gradually  succeeded  in  com- 
pounding with  their  deities  for  easier  terms,  —  a 
ram,  or  a  kid,  or  a  bullock,  instead  of  the  human 
victim.^ 

1  Mr.  Prescott,  to  aToid  shocking  the  reader  with  details,  re- 
fers him  to  the  twentj'-first  canto  of  Dante's  Inferno,  Conquest  of 
Mexico,  vol.  i.  p.  G4. 

2  See  below,  vol.  ii.  p.  283. 

8  The  victim,  hy  the  offer  of  which  the  wrath  of  the  god  was 
appeased  or  hi.s  favour  solicited,  must  always  be  some  valued 
possession  of  the  sacrificer.  Hence,  e.  g.,  among  the  Hebrews 
"  wild  animals,  as  not  being  property,  were  generally  considered 
unfit  for  sacrifice,"  (Mackay,  op.  cit.  ii.  398.)  Among  the  Aztecs 
(Prescott,  loc.  cit.)  on  certain  occasions  of  peculiar  solemnity  the 
clan  offered  some  of  its  own  members,  usually  children.  In  the 
lack  of  prisoners  such  offerings  would  more  often  be  necessary, 
hence  one  powerful  incentive  to  war.     The  use  of  prisoners  to 


ANCIENT  AMERICA, 


121 


The  ancient  Mexicans  had  not  arrived  at  this 
stage,  which  in  the  Old  World  characterized  the 
upper  period  of  barbarism.  Slavery  had,  however, 
made  a  beginning;   among  the  Aztecs. 

1  CI  111  Aztec  slaves. 

Ihe  nucleus  of  the  small  slave-popu- 
lation of  Mexico  consisted  of  outcasts^  persons 
expelled  from  the  clan  for  some  misdemeanour. 
The  simplest  case  was  that  in  which  a  member 
of  a  clan  failed  for  two  years  to  cultivate  his 
garden-plot.^  The  delinquent  member  was  de- 
prived, not  only  of  his  right  of  user,  but  of  all  liii 
rights  as  a  clansman,  and  the  only  way  to  escape 
starvation  was  to  work  upon  some  other  lot,  either 


buy  the  god's  favour  was  to  some  extent  a  substitute  fc  the  use 
of  the  clan's  own  members,  and  at  a  later  stage  the  use  of  do- 
mestic animals  was  a  further  substitution.  The  legend  of  Abra- 
ham and  Isaac  {Genesis,  xxii.  1-14)  preserves  the  tradition  of  this 
latter  substitution  among  the  ancient  Hebrews.  Compare  tlie 
Boeotian  I'lgend  of  the  temple  Df  Dionysos  Aigobolos  :  —  dvovres 
yap  TC|5  Oeq!  ■rrpoiix'^f\<^^v  ttots  vnh  ueOTjs  is  v^piv,  Siare  /cal  toO  Aio- 
vvaov  Thv  Up4a  airoKTflvovcnv  atroKrelvavTas  5^  avrlKa  iir^Ka^e 
f6aos  Xoi/xiiSris '  Kal  acpiaiv  aplKero  a/xa  iK  AeAc^wv,  rw  ^louvacf 
6veiv  iraiSa  wpatov  •  ire<Ti.  8e  ov  iroWols  tarfpop  rov  6e6u  <paaiv 
alya  iepfToi'  vvaWd^ai  (T<pl(nv  &vtI  tov  TroiSos.  Pausanias,  ix.  8. 
A  further  stage  of  progress  was  the  substitution  of  a  mere  inani^ 
mate  symbol  for  a  living  victim,  whether  human  or  brute,  aC 
shown  in  the  old  Roman  custom  of  appeasing  "  Father  Tiber '' 
once  a  year  by  the  ceremony  of  drowning  a  lot  of  dolls  in  that 
river.  Of  this  significant  rite  Mommsen  aptly  observes,  "  Die 
Ideen  gottlicher  Gnade  und  Versohnbarkeit  sind  hier  ununter- 
scheidbar  gemischt  mit  der  frommen  Schlauigkeifc,  welche  es  ver- 
sucht  den  gefiihrlichen  Herrn  durch  scheinliafte  Befriedigung  zu 
beriicken  und  abzufinden."  Bdmische  Geschichte,  4«  Aufl.,  18(55, 
bd.  i.  p.  176.  After  reading  such  a  remark  it  may  seem  odd  to 
find  the  writer,  in  a  footnote,  refusing  to  accept  the  true  explana- 
tion of  the  custom ;  but  that  was  a  quarter  of  a  century  a,go> 
when  much  less  was  known  about  ancient  society  than  now. 
■^  Bandelior,  op.  cit.  p.  Oil. 


122  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

in  his  own  or  in  some  other  clan,  and  be  paid  in 
such  pittance  from  its  produce  as  the  occupant 
might  choose  to  give  him.  This  was  slavery  in 
embryo.  The  occupant  did  not  own  this  outcast 
labourer,  any  more  than  he  owned  his  lot ;  he  only 
possessed  a  limited  right  of  user  in  both  labourer 
and  lot.  To  a  certain  extent  it  was  "  adverse  "  or 
exclusive  possession.  If  the  slave  ran  away  or 
was  obstinately  lazy,  he  could  be  made  to  wear  a 
wooden  collar  and  sold  without  his  consent ;  if  it 
proved  too  troublesome  to  keep  him,  the  collared 
slave  could  be  handed  over  to  the  priests  for 
sacrifice.^  In  this  class  of  outcasts  and  their 
masters  we  have  an  interesting  illustration  of  a 
rudimentary  phase  of  slavery  and  of  private  prop- 
erty. 

At  this  point  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  in  the 
development  of  the  family  the  Aztecs  had  ad- 
vanced considerably  beyond  the  point  attained  by 
Shawnees  and  Mohawks,  and  a  little  way  toward 
the  point  attained  in  the  patriarchal  family  of  the 
ancient  Romans  and  Hebrews.  In  the  Aztec  clan 
(which  was  exogamous  2)  the  change  to  descent  in 
The  Aztec  *^^^  male  line  seems  to  have  been  accom- 
fauuiy.  plished  before  the  time  of  the  Discovery. 

Apparently  it  had  been  recently  accomplished. 
Names  for  designating  family  relationships  re- 
mained in  that  primitive  stage  in  which  no  dis- 

^  There  was,  however,  in  this  extreme  case,  a  right  of  sanctuary. 
If  the  doomed  slave  could  flee  and  hide  himself  in  the  tecpan  be- 
fore the  master  or  one  of  his  sons  could  catch  him,  he  became 
free  and  recovered  his  clan-rights ;  and  no  third  person  was  al- 
lowed to  interfere  in  aid  of  the  pursuer.  Torquemada,  Monarquia 
Indiana,  ii.  504-5C6. 

'■^  Bancroft,  Native  Races  of  the  Pacijic  States,  vol.  ii.  p.  251. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


123 


tinction  is  made  between  father  and  uncle,  grand- 
children and  cousins.  The  family  was  still  too 
feebly  established  to  count  for  much  in  the  struc- 
ture of  society,  which  still  rested  firmly  upon  the 
clan.^  Nevertheless  the  marriage  bonds  were 
drawn  much  tighter  than  among  Indians  of  the 
lower  status,  and  penalties  for  incontinence  were 
more  severe.  The  wife  became  her  husband's 
property  and  was  entitled  to  the  protection  of  his 
clan.  All  matrimonial  arrangements  were  con- 
trolled by  the  clan,  and  no  member  of  it,  male  or 
female,  was  allowed  to  remain  unmarried,  except 
for  certain  religious  reasons.  The  penalty  for 
contumacy  was  expulsion  from  the  clan,  and  the 
same  penalty  was  inflicted  for  such  sexual  irregu- 
larities as  public  opinion,  still  in  what  we  shoidd 
call  quite  a  primitive  stage,  condemned.  Men 
and  women  thus  expelled  went  to  swell  the  num- 
bers of  that  small  class  of  outcasts  already  noted. 
With  men  the  result,  as  we  have  seen,  was  a  kind 
of  slavery  ;  with  women  it  was  prostitution  ;  and 
it  is  curious  to  see  that  the  same  penalty,  entail- 
ing such  a  result,  was  visited  alike  upon  unseemly 
frailty  and  upon  refusal  to  marry.  In  either  case 
the  fcin  consisted  in  rebellion  against  the  clan's 
standards  of  proper  or  permissible  behaviour. 

The  inheritance  in  the  male  line,  the  beginnings 
of  individual  property  in  slaves,  the  tightening  of 
the  marriage  bond,  accompanied  by  the  condemna- 
tion of  sundry  irregularities  heretofore  tolerated, 
are  phenomena  which  we  might  expect  to  find 
associated  together.  They  are  germs  of  the  up- 
1  Bandolier,  op.  cit.  pp.  429,  570,  620. 


1'  ■■■■ 


124  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

per  status  of  barbarism,  as  well  as  of  the  earliest 
status  of  civilization  more  remotely  to  follow. 
The  common  cause,  of  which  they  are  the  manifes- 
tations, is  an  increasing  sense  of  the  value  and  im- 
Aztec  prop.  portaucc  of  pcrsoual  property.  In  the 
erty.  Qjj  ^orld  this  sense  grew  up  during  a 

pastoral  stage  of  society  such  as  the  New  World 
never  knew,  and  by  the  ages  of  Abraham  and 
Agamemnon  ^  it  had  produced  results  such  as  had 
not  been  reached  in  Mexico  at  the  time  of  the 
Discovery.  Still  the  tendency  in  the  latter  coun- 
try was  in  a  similar  direction.  Though  there  was 
no  notion  of  real  estate,  and  the  house  was  still 
clan-property,  yet  the  number  and  value  of  arti- 
cles of  personal  ownership  had  no  doubt  greatly 
increased  during  the  long  interval  which  must 
have  elapsed  since  the  ancestral  Mexicans  entered 
upon  the  middle  status.  The  mere  existence  of 
large  and  busy  market-places  with  regular  and 
frequent  fairs,  even  though  trade  had  scarcely  be- 
gun to  emerge  from  the  stage  of  barter,  is  suffi- 
cient proof  of  this.  Such  fairs  and  markets  do 
not  belong  to  the  Mohawk  chapter  in  human  pro- 
gress. They  imply  a  considerable  number  and  di- 
versity of  artificial  products,  valued  as  articles  of 
personal  property.  A  legitimate  inference  from 
them  is  the  existence  of  a  certain  degree  of  luxury, 
though  doubtless  luxury  of  a  barbaric  type. 

^  I  here  use  these  world-famous  names  without  any  implication 
as  to  their  historical  character,  or  their  precise  date,  which  are 
in  themselves  interesting  subjec's  for  discussion.  I  use  them  as 
«)est  symbolizing  the  state  of  society  which  existed  about  the 
northern  and  eastern  shores  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean,  several 
eenturies  before  the  Olympiads. 


I 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


125 


It  is  at  this  point,  I  think,  that  a  judicious  critic 
will  begin  to  part  company  with  Mr.  Morgan. 
As  regards  the  outward  aspect  of  the  society 
which  the  Spaniards  found  in  Mexico,  Mr.  Morgan'e 
that  eminent  scholar  more  than  once  "^®*" 
used  arguments  that  were  inconsistent  with  prin» 
ciples  of  criticism  laid  down  by  himself.  At  the 
beginning  of  his  chapter  on  the  Aztec  confederacy 
Mr.  Morgan  proposed  the  following  rules :  — 

"The  histories  of  Spanish  America  may  be 
trusted  in  whatever  relates  to  the  acts  of  the 
Spaniards,  and  to  the  acts  and  personal  character- 
istics of  the  Indians  ;  in  whatever  relates  to  their 
weapons,  implements  and  utensils,  fabrics,  food 
and  raiment,  and  things  of  a  similar  character. 

"  But  in  whatever  relates  to  Indian  society  and 
government,  their  social  relations  and  plan  of  life, 
they  are  nearly  worthless,  because  they  learned 
nothing  and  knew  nothing  of  either.  We  are  at 
full  liberty  to  reject  them  in  these  respects  and 
commence  anew ;  using  any  facts  they  may  contain 
which  harmonize  with  what  is  known  of  Indian 
society."  ^ 

Perhaps  it  would  have  been  better  if  the  second 
of  these  rules  had  been  somewhat  differently 
worded;  for  even  with  regard  to  the  strange  so- 
ciety and  government,  the  Spanish  writers  have 
recorded  an  immense  number  of  valuable  facts, 
without  which  Mr.  Bandelier's  work  would  have 
been  impossible.  It  is  not  so  much  the  facts  as 
the  interpretations  of  the  Spanish  historians  that 
are  "nearly  worthless,"  and  even  their  misinter- 

^  Morgan,  Ancient  Society,  p.  186,  note. 


■--)[] 


i: 


in 


126  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA, 

pretations  are  interesting  and  instructive  when 
once  we  rightly  understand  them.  Sometimes 
they  really  help  us  toward  the  truth. 

The  broad  distinction,  however,  as  stated  in 
Mr.  Morgan's  pair  of  rules,  is  well  taken.  In  re- 
gard to  such  a  strange  form  of  society  the  Span- 
ish discoverers  of  Mexico  could  not  help  making 
mistakes,  but  in  regard  to  utensils  and  dress  their 
senses  were  not  likely  to  deceive  them,  and  their 
Mr.  Morgan  Statements,  according  to  Mr.  Morgan, 
JeS'^cThfs'^  ^^y  ^e  trusted.  Very  good.  But  as 
"Mon'tMu-       soon  as  Mr.  Morgan  had  occasion  to 

ma'B  Dinner."    ^J^^    ^^jq^i-    ^^^    ^^^^^^    Jjf^    ^f    ^J^g    J^^_ 

tecs,  he  forgot  his  own  rules  and  paid  as  little 
respect  to  the  senses  of  eye-witnesses  as  to  their 
judgment.  This  was  amusingly  illustrated  in  his 
famous  essay  on  "  Montezuma's  Dinner."  ^  When 
Bernal  Diaz  describes  Montezuma  as  sitting  on 
a  low  chair  at  a  table  covered  with  a  white  cloth, 
Mr.  Morgan  declares  that  it  could  not  have  been 
so,  —  there  were  no  chairs  or  tables  1  On  second 
thought  he  will  admit  that  there  may  have  been 
a  wooden  block  hollowed  out  for  a  stool,  but  in 
the  matter  of  a  table  he  is  relentless.  So  when 
Cortes,  in  his  despatch  to  the  emperor,  spea^cs  of 
the  "  wine-cellar  "  and  of  the  presence  of  ""  secre- 
taries "  at  dinner,  Mr.  Morgan  observes,  "  Since 
cursive  writing  was  unknown  among  the  Aztecs, 
the  presence  of  these  secretaries  is  an  amusing 
feature  in  the  account.  The  wine-cellar  also  is 
remarkable  for  two  reasons:  firstly,  because  the 

^  North  Amer.  Review,  April,  1876.     The  substance  of  it  wM 
Nproduced  in  his  Houses  and  House-Life,  chap.  z. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


127 


level  of  the  streets  and  courts  was  but  four  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  water,  which  made  cellars 
impossible  ;  and,  secondly,  because  the  Aztecs  had 
no  knowledge  of  wine.  An  acid  beer  Qpulque\ 
made  by  fermenting  the  juice  of  the  maguey,  was 
a  common  beverage  of  the  Aztecs ;  but  it  is  hardly 
supposable  that  even  this  was  used  at  dinner."  ^ 

To  this  I  would  reply  that  the  fibre  of  that 
same  useful  plant  from  which  the  Aztecs  made 
their  "  beer  "  supplied  them  also  with  paper,  upon 
which  they  were  in  the  habit  of  writing,  not  in- 
deed in  cursive  characters,  but  in  hieroglyphics. 
This  kind  ot  writing,  as  well  as  any  other,  ac- 
counts for  the  presence  of  secretaries,  which  seems 
to  me,. by  the  way,  a  very  probable  and  character- 
istic feature  in  the  narrative.  From  the  moment 
the  mysterious  strangers  landed,  every  movement 
of  theirs  had  been  recorded  in  hieroglyphics,  and 
there  is  no  reason  why  notes  of  what  they  said 
and  did  should  not  have  been  taken  at  dinner. 
As  for  the  place  where  the  pulque  was  kept,  it 
was  a  venial  slip  of  the  pen  to  call  it  a  ''  wine-cel- 
lar," even  if  it  was  not  below  the  ground,  '^^e 
language  of  Cortes  does  not  imply  that  he  v'  it(  \ 
the  "  cellar ;  "  he  saw  a  crowd  of  Indians  drii  ki'  3 
the  beverage,  and  supposing  the  great  house  he 
was  in  to  be  Montezuma's,  he  expressed  his  sense 
of  that  person's  hospitality  by  saying  that  "  his 
wine-cellar  was  open  to  all."  And  really,  is  it  not 
rather  a  captious  criticism  which  in  one  breath 
chides  Cortes  for  calling  the  beverage  "  wine," 
and  in  the  next  breath  goes  on  to  call  it  "  beer  "  ? 

1  Houses  and  House-Life,  p.  241. 


128 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


The  pulque  was  neither  the  one  nor  the  other ; 
for  want  of  any  other  name  a  German  might  have 
called  it  beer,  a  Spaniard  would  be  more  likely  to 
call  it  wine.  And  why  is  it  "  hardly  supposable  " 
that  pulque  was  used  at  dinner?  Why  should 
Mr.  Morgan,  who  never  dined  with  Montezuma, 
know  so  much  more  about  such  things  than  Cortes 
and  Bernal  Diaz,  who  did  ?  ^ 

The  Spanish  statements  of  facts  are,  of  course, 

not  to  be  accepted  uncritically.     When  we   are 

told  of  cut  slabs  of  porphyry  inlaid  in  the  walls 

of  a  room,  we  have  a  riffht  to  inquire 

The  reaction  ^  -"^    . 

agrinst  uncrit-  how  SO  hard  a  stonc  could  be  cut  with 

ical  and  ex-  i  «      i     o  i 

aggerated        flmt  Or  coppcr  chiscls,^  and  are  ready 

statements.  •' 

to  entertain  the  suggestion  that  some 
other  stone  might  easily  have  been  mistaken  for 
porphyry.  Such  a  critical  inquiry  is  eminently 
profitable,  and  none  the  less  so  when  it  brings  us 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  Aztecs  did  succeed  in 
cutting  porphyry.  Again,  when  we  read  about 
Indian  armies  of  200,000  men,  pertinent  questions 
arise  as  to  the  commissariat,  and  we  are  led  to  re- 
flect that  there  is  nothing  about  which  old  soldiers 
spin  such  unconscionable  yarns  as  about  the  size 

*  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  asks  some  similar  qiiestions  in  his  Myth, 
Ritual,  and  Ileligion,  vol.  ii.  p.  349,  but  in  a  tone  of  impatient 
contempt  which,  as  applied  to  a  man  of  Mr.  Morgan's  calibre,  is 
hardly  becoming. 

^  For  an  excellent  account  of  ancient  Mexican  knives  and 
chisels,  see  Dr.  Valentini's  paper  on  "  Semi-Lunar  and  Crescent- 
Shaped  Tools,"  in  Proceedings  of  Amer.  Antiq.  Soc,  New  Series, 
vol.  iii.  pp.  449-474.  Compare  the  very  interesting  Spanish, 
observations  on  copper  hatchets  and  flint  chisels  in  Clavigero, 
liistoria  antigua,  torn.  L  p.  242 ;  Mendieta,  Ilistoria  ecdesiastica 
Indiana,  torn.  iv.  cap.  xiL 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


129 


of  the  armies  they  have  thrashed.  In  a  fairy  tale, 
of  course,  such  suggestions  are  impertinent ;  things 
^an  go  on  anyhow.  In  real  life  it  is  different.  The 
trouble  with  most  historians  of  the  conquest  of 
Mexico  has  been  that  they  have  made  it  like  a 
fairy  tale,  and  the  trouble  with  Mr.  Morgan  was 
that,  in  a  wholesome  and  much-needed  spirit  of 
reaction,  he  was  too  much  inclined  to  dismiss  the 
whole  story  as  such.  He  forgot  the  first  of  his 
pair  of  rules,  and  applied  the  second  to  everything 
alike.  He  felt  "  at  full  liberty  to  reject "  the 
testimony  of  the  discoverers  as  to  what  they  saw 
and  tasted,  and  to  "commence  anew,"  reasoning 
from  "what  is  known  of  Indian  society."  And 
here  Mr.  Morgan's  mind  was  so  full  of  the  kind 
of  Indian  society  which  he  knew  more  minutely 
and  profoundly  than  any  other  man,  that  he  was 
apt  to  forget  that  there  could  be  any  other  kind. 
He  overlooked  his  own  distinction  between  the 
lower  and  middle  periods  of  barbarism  in  his  at- 
tempt to  ignore  or  minimize  the  points  of  differ- 
ence between  Aztecs  and  Iroquois.^  In  this  way 
he  did  injustice  to  his  own  brilliant  and  useful 
classification  of  stages  of  culture,  and  in  particular 
to  the  middle  period  of  barbarism,  the  significance 
of  which  he  was  the  first  to  detect,  but  failed  to 
realize  fully  because  his  attention  had  been  so  in- 
tensely concentrated  upon  the  lower  period. 

^  It  often  happens  that  the  followers  of  a  great  man  are  more 
likely  to  run  to  exti'emes  than  their  master,  as,  for  example,  when 
we  see  the  queen  of  pueblos  rashly  described  as  "  a  collection  of 
mud  huts,  such  as  Cortes  found  and  dignified  with  the  name  of  a 
city."  Smithsonian  Report,  1887,  part  i.  p.  691.  This  is  quite 
inadmissible. 


130  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

In  truth,  the  middle  period  of  barbarism  was 
one  of  the  most  important  periods  in  the  career 
of  the  human  race,  and  full  of  fascination  to  the 
Importance  of  studcut,  as  the  Unfading  interest  in  an- 
periodt'f'bar-  cicut  Mcxico  and  the  huge  mass  of  lit- 
bariBin.  erature  devoted  to  it  show.     It  spanned 

the  interval  between  such  society  as  that  of  Hia- 
watha and  such  as  that  of  the  Odyssey.  One 
more  such  interval  (and,  I  suspect,  a  briefer  one, 
because  the  use  of  iron  and  the  development  of 
inheritable  wealth  would  accelerate  progress)  led 
to  the  age  that  could  write  the  Odyssey,  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  productions  of  the  human  mind. 
If  Mr.  Morgan  had  always  borne  in  mind  that,  on 
his  own  classification,  Montezuma  must  have  been 
at  least  as  near  to  Agamemnon  as  to  Powhatan, 
his  attitude  toward  the  Spanish  historians  would 
have  been  less  hostile.  A  Moqui  pueblo  stands 
near  the  lower  end  of  the  middle  period  of  bar- 
barism ;  ancient  Troy  stood  next  the  upper  end. 
Mr.  Morgan  found  apt  illustrations  in  the  former ; 
perhaps  if  he  had  lived  long  enough  to  profit  by 
the  work  of  Scliliemann  and  Bandelier,  he  might 
have  found  equally  apt  ones  in  the  latter.  Mr. 
Bandelier's  researches  certainly  show  that  the  an- 
cient city  of  Mexico,  in  point  of  social  develop- 
ment, stood  somewhere  between  the  two. 

How  that  city  looked  may  best  be  described 
when  we  come  to  tell  what  its  first  Spanish  vis- 
itors saw.  Let  it  suffice  here  to  say  that,  upon  a 
reasonable  estimate  of  their  testimony,  pleasure- 
gardens,  menageries  and  aviaries,  fountains  and 
baths,  tessellated  marble  floors,  finely  wrought  pot- 


ANCIENT  AMERICA, 


131 


tery,  exquisite  feather-work,  brilliant  mats  and 
tapestries,  silver  goblets,  dainty  spices  burning  in 
golden  censers,  varieties  of  highly  seasoned  dishes, 
dramatic  performances,  jugglers  and  acrobats,  bal- 
lad singers  and  dancing  girls,  —  such  things  were 
to  be  seen  in  this  city  of  snake-worshipping  canni- 
bals. It  simulated  civilization  as  a  tree-fern  simu- 
lates a  tree. 


In  its  general  outlines  the  account  here  given  of 
Aztec  society  and  government  at  the  time  of  the 
Discovery  will  probably  hold  true  of  aU  the  semi- 
civilized  communities  of  the  Mexican  peninsula 
and  Central  America.  The  pueblos  of  Mexico 
were  doubtless  of  various  grades  of  size,  strength, 
and  comfort,  ranging  from  such  structures  as  Zuiii 
up  to  the  city  of  Mexico.  The  cities  Mexican  and 
of  Chiapas,  Yucatan,  and  Guatemala,  ^^''y**- 
whose  ruins,  in  those  tropical  forests,  are  so  im- 
pressive, probably  belong  to  the  same  class.  The 
Maya-Quiche  tribes,  who  dwelt  and  still  dwell  in 
this  region,  were  different  in  stock-language  from 
their  neighbours  of  lyiexico ;  but  there  are  strong 
reasons  for  believing  that  the  two  great  groups, 
Mexicans  and  Mayas,  arose  from  the  expansion 
and  segmentation  of  one  common  stock,  and  there 
is  no  doubt  as  to  the  very  close  similarity  be- 
tween the  two  in  government,  religion,  and  social 
advancement.  In  some  points  the  Mayas  were 
superior.  They  possessed  a  considerable  litera- 
ture, written  in  highly  developed  hieroglyphic 
characters  upon  maguey  paper  and  upon  deerskin 
parchment,  so  that  from  this  point  of  view  they 


132 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


stood  upon  the  tliroslioltl  of  civilization  as  strictly 
detiiied.^     But,  like  the  Mexicans,  they  were  igno- 

^  Tills  writing  was  at  once  recognized  by  learned  Spaniards, 
like  Las  Casas,  as  entirely  different  from  anything  found  else- 
where in  America.  lie  found  in  Yucatan  "  letreros  de  ciertos 
caracteres  que  en  otra  ninguna  parte,"  Las  Casas,  Jlistoria  apo- 
Ivgt'tica,  cap.  cxxiii.  For  an  account  of  the  hieroglyphics,  see  the 
learned  essays  of  Dr.  Cyrus  Thomas,  A  Study  of  the  Manuscript 
Troano,  Washington,  1S82  ;  "  Notes  on  certain  ALiya  and  Mexican 
MSS.,"  Third  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnologi/,  pp.  7-1."j3  ;  "Aids 
to  the  Study  of  the  Maya  Codices,"  Sixth  Report,  pp.  259-37L 
(The  paper  last  mentioned  ends  with  the  weighty  words,  "  The 
more  I  study  these  characters  the  stronger  becomes  the  convic- 
tion that  they  have  grown  out  of  a  pictographic  system  similar  to 
that  common  among  the  Indians  of  North  America."  Exactly 
80 ;  and  this  is  typical  of  every  aspect  and  every  detail  of  ancient 
American  culture.  It  is  becoming  daily  more  evident  that  the 
old  notion  of  .an  influence  from  Asia  has  not  a  leg  to  stand  on.) 
See  also  a  suggestive  paper  by  the  astronomer,  E.  S.  Ilolden, 
"Studies  in  Central  American  Picture-Writing,"  Firs:'  Report  of 
the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  ^p.  205-24.5;  Brinton,  ^l?ictVn<  Phonetic 
Alphabet  of  Yucatan,  New  York,  1870;  Essays  of  an  Americanisty 
Philadelphia,  1890,  pp.  193-1304 ;  L^on  de  Rosny,  Les  e'crituret 
fguratives,  Paris,  1870 ;  L^ interpretation  des  anciens  textes  Mayas, 
Paris,  1875 ;  Essai  sur  le  dechiffrement  de  IVcriture  hiiratique  de 
VAmirique  Centrale,  Paris,  1876 ;  Forstemann,  Erliiuterungen  der 
Maya  Ilandschrift,  Dresden,  188G.  The  decipherment  is  as  yet 
but  partially  accomplished.  The  Me:;ican  system  of  writing  is 
clearly  developed  from  the  ordinary  Indian  pictographs  ;  it  could 
not  have  arisen  from  the  Maya  system,  but  the  latter  might  well 
have  been  a  further  development  of  the  Mexican  system  ;  the 
Maya  system  had  probably  developed  some  characters  with  a 
phonetic  value,  i.  e.  was  groping  toward  the  alphabetical  stage ; 
but  how  far  this  groping  had  gone  must  remain  very  doubtful 
until  the  decipherment  has  proceeded  further.  Dr.  Isaac  Taylor 
is  too  hasty  in  saying  that  "the  Mayas  employed  twenty-seven 
charactei-s  which  must  be  admitted  to  be  alphabetic  ' '  (Taylor, 
The  Alphabet,  vol.  i.  p.  24)  ;  this  statement  is  followed  by  the 
conclusion  th.at  the  M.aya  system  of  writing  wno  "fuiperior  in 
simplicity  and  convenience  to  that  employed  ...  by  the  great 
Assyrian  nation  at  the  epoch  of  its  greatest  power  and  elory." 


••jtmniA:^. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA, 


188 


rant  of  iron,  thtir  society  was  organized  upon  tho 
principle  of  gentilisni,  they  were  cannibals  and 
satn'ificed  men  and  women  to  idols,  some  of  wliicli 
were  identical  with  tliose  of  Mexico.  The  Mayas 
had   no   conception   of   property   in   land ;    their 

r 


lit±±±±±±±±±±±UJ 


eJIII]  [1113=: 


279  FT 


I3i 


Ground-plan  of  so-called  "House  of  the  Nuns"  at  Uxmal. 

buildings  were  great  communal  houses,  like  pueb- 
los ;  in  some  cases  these  so-called  palaces,  at  first 
supposed  to  be  scanty  remnants  of  vast  cities,  were 
themselves   the   entire   "  cities ;  "    in   other  cases 

Dr.  Taylor  has  been  misled  by  Diego  de  Landa,  whose  work 
{Relation  des  chases  de  /'  Yucatan,  ed.  Brasseur,  Paris,  1804)  haa 
in  it  some  pitfalls  for  the  unwary. 


■,,„( 


134 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


there  were  doubtless  large  composite  pueblos  fit 
to  be  called  cities. 

These  noble  ruins  have  excited  great  and  in- 
creasing interest  since  the  publication  of  Mr.  Ste- 
phens's charming  book  just  fifty  years  ago.^  An 
air  of  profound  mystery  surroimded  them,  and 
many  wild  theories  were  propornded  to  account 
for  their  existence.     Th'^y  were  at  first 

Ruined  cities  t,     i         •,!  j«   i     i  i-       '^ 

of  Central        accredited   with   a  labmous    antiquity, 

America.  ,   .  ^  .  ,  .  . 

and  in  at  least  one  instance  this  notion 
was  responsible  for  what  must  be  called  misrepre- 
sentation, if  not  hmnbug.^     Having  been  placed 

^  Stephens,  Incidents  of  Travel  in  Central  America,  Chiapas, 
and  Yucatan,  2  vols.,  New  York,  1841. 

2  It  occurred  in  the  drawings  of  the  artist  Frederic  de  Wal- 
deck,  who  visited  Palenque  before  Stephens,  but  whose  re- 
searches were  published  later.  ' '  His  drawings,"  says  Mr.  Winsor, 
"  are  exquisite  ;  but  he  was  not  free  from  a  tendency  to  improve 
and  restore,  where  the  conditions  gave  a  hint,  and  so  as  we  have 
them  in  the  final  publication  they  have  not  been  accepted  as 
■wholly  trustworthy."  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist.,  i.  194,  M.  do  Char- 
nay  puts  it  more  strongly.  Upon  his  drawing  of  a  certain  panel 
at  Palenque,  M.  de  Waldeck  "  has  seen  fit  to  place  th:ee  or  four 
elephants.  What  end  did  he  propose  to  himself  in  giving  this 
fictitious  representation  ?  Presumably  to  j  "  ^  a  prehistoric  origin 
to  these  ruins,  since  it  is  an  ascertained  fa. .  chat  elephants  in  a 
fossil  state  only  have  been  found  on  the  American  continent.  It 
is  needless  to  add  that  neither  Catherwood,  who  drew  these  iu- 
sci-iptions  most  minutely,  nor  myself  who  brought  impressions  of 
them  away,  nor  living  man,  ever  saw  these  elephants  and  their 
tine  trunks.  But  such  is  the  "ischief  engendered  by  precon- 
ceived opinions.  With  some  writers  it  would  seem  that  to  give 
a  lecent  date  to  these  monuments  'ould  deprive  them  of  all  in- 
terest. Itwoiild  have  bet^n  fortu"atehad  explorers  been  imbued 
with  fewer  prejudices  and  gifted  with  a  little  more  common  sense, 
for  then  we  should  have  known  the  truth  with  regard  to  these 
ruins  loiip"  since."  Charnay,  The  ^Ijicietit  Cities  of  the  New 
World,  London,  1887,  p.  248.  The  gallant  explorer's  indignv 
tiou  is  cei  linly  qr.ite  pardonable. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


135 


by  popular  fancy  at  such  a  remote  age,  they  wero 
naturally  supposed  to  have  been  built,  not  by  tne 
Mayas,  —  who  still  inhabit  Yucatan  and  do  not 
absolutely  dazzle  us  with  their  exalted  civilization, 
—  but  by  some  wonderful  people  long  since  van- 
ished. Now  as  to  this  point  the  sculptured  slabs 
of  Uxmal  and  Chichen-Itza  tell  their  own  story. 
They  are  covered  with  hieroglyphic  inscriptions, 
and  these  hieroglyphs  are  the  same  as  those  in 
which  the  Dresden  Codex  and  other  Maya  manu- 
scripts still  preserved  are  written ;  though  their 
decipherment  is  not  yet  complete,  there  is  no  sort 
of  doubt  as  to  their  being  written  in  the  Maya 
characters.  Careful  inspection,  moreover,  shows 
that  the  buildings  in  which  these  insciiptions  oc- 
cur are  not  so  very  ancient.  Mr.  Stephens,,  who 
was  one  of  their  earliest  as  well  as  sanest  ex- 
plorers, believed  them  to  be  the  work  of  the 
Mayas  at  a  comparatively  recent  period.^  The 
notion  of  their  antiquity  was  perhaps  suggested 
by  the  belief  that  certain  colossal  mahogany  trees 

1  Some  of  his  remarks  are  worth  quoting  in  detail,  especially 
in  view  of  the  time  when  they  were  written :  "I  repeat  my 
opinion  tiiat  we  .>.re  nut  warranted  in  going  back  to  any  ancient 
nation  of  the  Olil  World  for  the  builders  of  these  cities ;  that  they 
ai'e  not  the  work  of  people  who  have  passed  away  and  whose  his- 
tory is  lost,  but  that  there  are  strong  reasons  to  believe  them  the 
creations  of  the  same  races  who  inhabited  the  country  at  tlie  time 
of  the  Spanish  conquest,  or.  sorao  not  very  distant  progenitors. 
And  I  would  remark  that  we  began  our  exploration  without  any 
theory  to  support.  .  .  .  Some  are  beyond  doubt  older  than  others ; 
some  are  known  to  have  been  inhabited  at  the  time  of  the  Span- 
ish conquest,  and  others,  perhaps,  were  really  in  ruins  before  ;  .  .  . 
bui  in  regard  to  Ux'^al,  at  least,  we  believe  that  it  was  an  exist- 
ing and  inhabited  city  at  the  time  of  the  arrival  of  the  Spaniards  " 
Stephens,  Centred  America,  etc.,  vol.  ii.  p.  455. 


136 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


ii'li 


growing  between  and  over  the  ruins  at  Palenque 
must  bo  nearly  12,000  years  old.  But  when  M.  de 
Charnay  visited  Palenque  in  1859  he  had  the  east- 
ern side  of  the  "  palace "  cleared  of  its  dense 
vegetation  in  order  to  get  a  good  photograph; 
and  when  he  revisited  the  spot  in  1881  he  found 
a  sturdy  growth  of  young  mahogany  the  age  of 
which  he  knew  did  not  exceed  twenty-two  years. 
Instead  of  maldng  a  ring  once  a  year,  as  in  our 
sluggish  and  temperate  zone,  these  trees  had  made 
rings  at  the  rate  of  about  one  in  a  month ;  their 
trunks  were  already  more  than  two  feet  in  di- 
ameter ;  judging  from  this  rate  of  growth  the  big- 
gest giant  on  the  place  need  not  have  been  more 
than  200  years  old,  if  as  much.^ 

These  edifices  are  not  so  durably  constructetl  as 
those  which  in  Europe  have  stood  for  more  than 
a  thousand  years.  They  do  not  indicate  a  high 
civilization  on  the  part  of  their  builders.  Tliey 
do  not,  as  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  says,  "  throw  My- 
cenae into  the  shade,  and  rival  the  re- 
mains of  Cambodia."  ^  In  pictures 
they  may  seem  to  do  so,  but  M.  de 
Charnay,  after  close  and  repeated  ex- 
amination of  these  buildings,  assures  us  that  as 
structures  they  "cannot  be  compared  with  those 
at  Cambodia,  which  belong  to  nearly  the  same 
period,  the  twelfth  century,  and  which,  notwith- 
standing their  greater  and  more  resisting  pi'opor- 
tions,  are  fomid  in  the  same  dilapidated   condi- 

1  Charnay,  The  Ancient  Cities  of  the  New  World,  p.  260. 

2  Lajig,  Myth,  Ritual,  and  Religion,  vol.  ii.  p.  348. 


Tliey  are  prob- 
ably not  older 
than  the 
twelfth  cen- 
tury. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


137 


tion."  ^  It  seems  to  me  that  if  Mr.  Lang  had 
spoken  of  the  Yucatan  ruins  as  rivalling  the  re- 
mains of  Mycenae,  instead  of  "  throwing  them  into 
the  shade,"  he  woidd  have  come  nearer  the  mark. 
The  builders  of  Uxnial,  like  those  of  Mycenae,  did 
not  understand  the  principle  of  the  arch,  but  were 
feeling  their  way  toward  it.^  And  here  again  we 
are  brought  back,  as  seems  to  ha23pen  whatever 
road  we  follow,  to  the  middle  status  of  barbarism. 
The  Yucatan  architecture  shows  the  marks  of  its 
origin  in  the  axlobe  and  rubble-stone  work  of  the 
New  Mexico  pueblos.  The  inside  of  the  wall  "  is 
a  rude  mixture  of  friable  mortar  and  small  irregu- 
lar stones,"  and  under  the  pelting  tropical  rains 
the  dislocation  of  the  outer  facing  is  presently  ef- 
fected. The  large  blocks,  cut  with  flint  chisels, 
are  of  a  soft  stone  that  is  soon  damaged  by 
weather ;  and  the  cornices  and  lintels  are  beams 
of  a  very  hard  wood,  yet  not  so  hard  but  that  in- 
sects bore  into  it.  From  such  considerations  it  is 
justly  inferred  that  the  highest  probable  antiquity 
for  most  of  the  ruins  in  Yucatan  or  Central  Amer- 
ica is  the  twelfth  or  thirteenth  century  of  our  era.^ 
Some,  perhaps,  may  be  no  older  than  the  ancient 
city  of  Mexico,  built  A.  D.  1325. 

^  Charnay,  op.  cit,  p.  209.  "  I  may  remark  that  [the]  virgin 
forests  [here]  have  po  very  old  trees,  being  destroyed  by  insects, 
moisture,  lianas,  etc.  ;  and  old  nionteros  tell  me  that  mahogany 
and  cedar  trees,  wluch  are  most  durable,  do  not  live  above  200 
yeai's,"  id.  p.  447. 

^  The  reader  will  find  it  suggestive  to  compare  portions  of 
Scliliemaun's  Mycence  and  M.  de  Charnay's  book,  just  cited,  with 
Morgan's  IIoKses  and  House-Life^  chap.  xi. 

*  Charnay,  op.  cit.  p.  411.  Copan  and  Palenque  may  be  two  or 
three  centuries  older,  and  had  probably  fallen  into  ruins  before 
tlie  arrival  of  the  Spaniards. 


;  I  J! 


188  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

But  we  are  no  longer  restricted  to  purely  ar- 
chaeological evidence.  One  of  the  most  impressive 
of  all  these  ruined  cities  is  Chichen-Itza,  which  is 
regarded  as  older  than  Uxmal,  but  not  so  old  is 
Izamal.  Now  in  recent  ^imes  sundry  old  Maya 
Chronicle  of  documcnts  havc  been  discovered  in 
chicxuiub.  Yucatan,  and  among  them  is  a  brief 
history  of  the  Spanish  conquest  of  that  country, 
written  in  the  Roman  character  by  a  native  chief, 
Nakuk  Pech,  about  1562.  It  has  been  edited, 
with  an  English  translation,  by  that  zealous  and 
indefatigable  scholar,  to  whom  American  philol- 
ogy owes  such  a  debt  of  gratitude,  —  Dr.  Daniel 
Brinton.  This  chronicle  tells  us  several  things 
that  we  did  not  know  before,  and,  among  others, 
it  refers  most  explicitly  to  Chichen-Itza  and  Iza- 
mal as  inhabited  towns  during  the  time  that  the 
Spaniards  were  coming,  from  1519  to  1542.  If 
there  could  have  been  any  lingering  doubt  as  to 
the  correctness  of  the  views  of  Stephens,  Morgan, 
and  Charnay,  this  contemporaneous  documentary 
testimony  dispels  it  once  for  all.^ 

1  Brinton,  ""Ae  Maya  Chronicles,  Philadelphia,  1882,  "  Chron- 
icle of  Chicxuiub,"  pp.  187-259.  This  book  is  of  great  impor- 
tance, and  for  the  ancient  history  of  Guatemala  Brinton's  Annals 
of  the  Cakchiquels,  Philadelphia,  1885,  is  of  like  value  and  in- 
terest. 

Half  a  .century  ago  Mr.  Stephens  \rTote  in  truly  prophetic  vein, 
*'  the  convents  are  rich  in  manuscripts  and  documents  written  by 
the  early  fathers,  caciques,  and  Indians,  who  very  soon  acquired 
the  knowledge  of  Spanish  and  the  art  of  writing.  These  have, 
never  been  examined  with  the  slightest  reference  to  this  subject ; 
and  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  some  precious  memorial  is  nou 
mouldering  in  the  library  of  a  neighbouring  convent,  which  would 
determine  the  history  of  some  one  of  these  ruined  cities."  Vol.  ii.  p^ 
456.    The  italicizing,  of  course,  is  mine. 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


139 


The  Mexicans  and  Mayas  believed  themselves 
to  be  akin  to  each  other,  they  had  several  deities 
and  a  large  stock  of  traditional  lore  in  common, 
and  there  was  an  essential  similarity  in  ^^^^  culture 
their  modes  of  life ;  so  that,  since  we  Jeiate*dTo^^ 
are  now  assured  that  such  cities  as  Iza-  ^^""^^^ 
mal  and  Chichen-Itza  were  contemporary  with  the 
city  of  Mexico,  we  shall  probably  not  go  very  far 
astray  if  we  assume  that  the  elaborately  carved  and 
bedizened  ruins  of  the  former  may  give  us  some 
hint  as  to  how  things  might  have  looked  in  the  lat- 
ter. Indeed  this  complicated  and  grotesque  carv- 
ing on  walls,  door-posts,  and  lintels  was  one  of  the 
first  things  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  Spaniards 
in  Mexico.  They  regarded  it  with  mingled  indig- 
nation and  awe,  for  serpents,  coiled  or  uncoiled, 
with  gaping  mouths,  were  mos*^^  conspicuous  among 
the  objects  represented.  The  visitors  soon  learned 
that  all  this  had  a  symbolic  and  religious  meaning, 
and  with  some  show  of  reason  they  concluded  that 
this  strange  people  worshipped  the  Devilt 


We  have  now  passed  in  review  the  various  peo- 
ples of  North  America,  from  the  Arctic  circle  to 
the  neighbourhood  of  the  isthmus  of  Darien,  and 
can  form  some  sort  of  a  mental  picture  of  the  con- 
tinent at  the  time  of  its  discovery  by  Europeans 
in  the  fifteenth  century.  Much  more  might  have 
been  said  without  going  beyond  the  requirements 
of  an  outline  sketch,  but  quite  as  much  has  been 
said  as  is  consistent  with  the  general  plan  of  this 
book.  I  have  not  undertaken  at  present  to  go  be- 
yond the  isthmus  of  Darien,  because  this  prelim- 


140 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


inary  chapter  is  already  disproportionately  long, 
and  after  this  protracted  discussion  the  reader's 
attention  may  be  somewhat  relieved  by  an  entire 
change  of  scene.  Enough  has  been  set  fortli  to 
explain  the  narrative  that  follows,  and  to  justify 
us  henceforth  in  taking  certain  things  for  granted. 
The  outline  description  of  Mexico  will  be  completed 
when  we  come  to  the  story  of  its  conquest  by  Sjian- 
iards,  and  then  we  shall  be  ready  to  describe  some 
principal  features  of  Peruvian  society  and  to  under- 
stand how  the  Siianiards  conquered  that  country. 


There  is,  however,  one  conspicuous  feature  of 
North  American  antiquity  which  has  not  yet  re- 
ceived our  attention,  and  which  calls  for  a  few 
words  before  we  close  this  chapter.     I  refer  to  the 

The "  Mound-  niounds  that  are  scattered  over  so  large 
BuiiderB."       ^  pj^j,^  Qf  ti^Q  gQii  Qf  ti^g  United  States, 

and  more  particularly  to  those  between  the  Mis- 
sissijipi  river  and  the  Alleghany  mountains,  which 
have  been  the  subject  of  so  much  theorizing,  and 
in  late  years  of  so  much  careful  study.^     Vague 

^  For  original  researches  in  the  mounds  one  cannot  do  better 
than  consult  the  following  papers  in  the  Reports  of  the  Bureau  of 
Ethnology:  — 1.  by  W.  H.  Holmes,  "Art  in  Shell  of  the  An- 
cient Americans,"  ii.  181-305;  "The  Anoient  Pottery  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley,"  iv.  305-436 ;  "  Prehistoric  Textile  Fabrics 
of  the  United  States,"  iii.  397-431  ;  followed  by  an  illustrated 
catalogue  of  objects  collected  chiefly  from  mounds,  iii.  4.">3-515  ; 
«—  2.  H.  W.  Henshaw,  "  Animal  Carvings  from  the  Mounds  of  the 
Mississippi  V;  y,"  ii.  121-lGO  ;  —  3.  Cyrus  Thomas,  "Burial 
iilounds  of  the  Xorthem  Section  of  the  United  States,"  v.  7-11'.) ; 
also  three  of  the  Bureau's  "Bulletins"  by  Dr.  Tliomas,  "The 
Problem  of  the  Oliio  Mounds,"  " The  Circular,  Squ.ue,  and  Oc- 
tagonal Earthworks  of  Ohio,"  and  "  Work  in  Mound  Exploration 
of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology;"  also  two  articles  by  Dr.  Thomas 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


141 


Jc- 
1)11 
laa 


and  wild  were  the  speculations  once  rife  about 
the  "  Mound-Builders  "  and  their  wonderful  civil- 
ization. They  were  supposed  to  have  been  a  race 
quite  different  from  the  red  men,  with  a  culture 
perhaps  superior  to  our  own,  and  more  or  less  elo- 
quence was  wasted  over  the  vanished  "  empire " 
of  the  mound-builders.  There  is  no  reason,  how- 
ever, for  supposing  that  there  ever  was  an  empire 
of  any  sort  in  ancient  North  America,  and  no  relic 
of  the  past  has  ever  been  seen  at  any  spot  on  our 
planet  which  indicates  the  former  existence  of  a 
vanished  civilization  even  remotely  approaching 
our  own.  The  sooner  the  student  of  history  gets 
his  head  cleared  of  all  such  rubbish,  the  better. 
As  for  the  mounds,  which  are  scattered  in  such 
profusion  over  the  country  west  of  the  Allegha- 
nies,  there  are  some  which  have  been  built  by  In- 

in  the  Magazine  of  American  History :  —  "  The  Houses  of  the 
Mound-Builders,"  xi.  110-115;  "Indian  Tribes  in  Prehistoric 
Times,"  xx.  193-201.  See  also  Horatio  Hale,  "Indian  Migra- 
tions," in  American  Antiquarian,  y.  18-28,  108-124  ;  M.  F.  Force, 
To  What  Race  did  the  Mound-Builders  belong  ?  Cincinnati,  1875 ; 
Lucien  Carr,  Mounds  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  historically  con- 
sidered, 188;5 ;  Nadaillac's  Prehistoric  America,  ed.  W.  H.  Dall, 
chaps,  iii.,  iv.  The  earliest  work  of  fundamental  importance  on 
the  subject  was  Squier's  Ancient  Monuments  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley,  Pliiladelijhia,  1848,  being  the  first  volume  of  the  Smith- 
sonian Contributions  to  Knowledge.  —  For  statements  of  the 
theory  which  presumes  either  a  race  connection  or  a  simila^.ty  in 
culture  between  the  mound-builders  and  the  pueblo  Indians,  sep 
Dawson,  Fossil  Men,  p.  55 ;  Foster,  Prehistoric  Races  of  the 
United  States,  Chicago,  1873,  chaps.  iii.,v.-x. ;  Sir  Daniel  Wilson, 
Prehistoric  Man,  chap.  x.  The  .annual  Smithsonian  Reports  for 
thirty  years  past  illustrate  the  growth  of  knowledge  .and  progres- 
sive changes  of  opinion  on  the  subject.  The  bibliographical  ac- 
count in  Winsor's  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist.,  i.  397-412,  is  full  of 
minute  iuformatiou. 


w 


142 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


dians  since  the  arrival  of  white  men  in  America, 
and  whieli  contain  knives  and  trinkets  of  Enro- 
pean  manufacture.  There  are  many  others  which 
are  much  older,  and  in  which  the  genuine  remains 
sometimes  indicate  a  culture  like  that  of  Shawnees 
or  Senecas,  and  sometimes  suggest  something  per- 
haps a  little  higher.  With  the  progi-ess  of  re- 
search the  vast  and  vague  notion  of  a  distinct 
race  of  "  Mound-Builders  "  became  narrowed  and 
The  notion  defined.  It  began  to  seem  probable 
likethe aT-*"^  that  the  builders  of  the  more  remark- 
'^"'  able   mounds   were    tribes   of    Indians 

who  had  advanced  beyond  the  average  level  in 
horticulture,  and  consequently  in  density  of  popu- 
lation, and  perhaps  in  political  and  priestly  organ- 
ization. Such  a  conclusion  seemed  to  be  supported 
by  the  size  of  some  of  the  "  ancient  garden-beds," 
often  covering  more  than  a  hundred  acres,  filled 
with  the  low  parallel  ridges  in  which  corn  was 
planted.  The  mound  people  were  thus  supposed 
to  be  semi-civilized  red  men,  like  the  Aztecs,  and 
some  of  their  elevated  earthworks  were  explained 
as  places  for  human  sacrifice,  like  the  pyramids  of 
Mexico  and  Central  America.  It  was  thought 
that  the  "  civilization  "  of  the  Cordilleran  peoples 
might  formerly  have  extended  northward  and  east- 
ward into  the  Mississij^pi  vaUey,  and  might  after 
a  while  have  been  pushed  back  by  powerful  hordes 
of  more  barbarous  invaders.  A  f  urtlier  modification 
and  reduction  of  this  theory  likened  the  mound- 
builders  to  the  pueblo  Indians  of  New  Mexico. 
Such  was  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Morgan,  who  of- 
fered a  very  ingenious  explanation  of  the  extensive 


HI? 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


143 


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lit 

!S 

m 


re 


earthworks  at  High  Bank,  in  Ross  county,  Ohio, 
as  the  fortified  site  of  a  pueblo. ^  Although  there 
is  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the  mound-build- 
ers practised  irrigation  (which  woidd  not  be  re- 
quired in  the  Mississippi  valley)  or  used  adobe- 
brick,  yet  Mr.  Morgan  was  inclined  to  admit  them 
into  his  middle  status  of  barbarism  be-  or  like  the 
cause  of  the  copper  hatchets  and  chisels  ^"^*" 
found  in  some  of  the  mounds,  and  because  of  the 
apparent  superiority  in  horticulture  and  the  in- 
creased reliance  upon  it.  He  suggested  that  a 
people  somewhat  like  the  Zufiis  might  have  mi- 
grated eastward  and  modified  their  building  hab- 
its to  suit  the  altered  conditions  of  the  Mississippi 
valley,  where  they  dwelt  for  several  centuries, 
until  at  last,  for  some  unknown  reason,  they  re- 
tired to  the  Rocky  Mountain  region.  It  seems  to 
me  that  an  opinion  just  the  reverse  of  Mr.  Mor- 
gan's would  be  more  easily  defensible,  —  namely, 
that  the  ancestors  of  the  pueblo  Indians  were  a 
people  of  building  habits  somewhat  similar  to  the 
Mandans,  and  that  their  habits  became  modified 
in  adaptation  to  a  country  which  demanded  care- 
ful irrigation  and  supplied  adobe-clay  in  abun- 
dance. If  ever  they  built  any  of  the  mounds  in 
the  Mississippi  valley,  I  should  be  disposed  to 
place  their  mound-building  period  before  their 
pueblo  period. 

Recent  researches,  however,  make  it  more  and 

more    improbable   that   the  mound-builders  were 

nearly  akin  to  such  people  as  the  Zunis  or  similar 

to  them  in  grade  of  culture.    Of  late  years  the  ex. 

1  Houses  and  House-Life,  chap.  ix. 


!l^i 


144  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

ploration  of  the  mounds  has  been  carried  on  with 
increasing  diligence.  More  than  2,000  mounds 
have  been  opened,  and  at  least  38,000  ancient 
relics  have  been  gathered  from  them :  such  as 
quartzite  arrow-heads  and  spades,  greenstone  axes 
and  hammers,  mortars  and  pestles,  tools  for  spin- 
ning and  weaving,  and  cloth,  made  of  spun  thread 
and  woven  with  warp  and  woof,  somewhat  like  a 
coarse  sail-<doth.  The  water-jugs,  kettles,  pipes, 
and  sepulchral  urns  have  been  elaborately  studied. 
The  net  results  of  all  this  investigation,  up  to  the 
present  time,  have  been  concisely  sunnned  up  by 
jjii  Dr.  Cyrus  Thomas.^    The  mounds  were 

were  probably    not  all    built    by  one  people,  but  by  dif- 
ferent peoples    ferent  tribes  as   clearly  distinguishable 

in  the  lower        „  ,  at 

status  of  bar-  trom  ouc  auother  as  Algonqums  are 
distinguishable  from  Iroquois.  These 
mound-building  tribes  were  not  superior  in  cul- 
ture to  the  Iroquois  and  many  of  the  Algonquins 
as  first  seen  by  white  men.  They  are  not  to  be 
classified  with  Zufiis,  still  less  with  Mexicans  or 
Mayas,  in  point  of  culture,  but  with  Shawnees 
and  Cherokees.  !Nay  more,  —  some  of  them  were 
Shawnees  and  Cherokees.  The  missionary  Johann 
Heckewelder  long  ago  published  the  Lenape  tradi- 
tion of  the  Tallegwi  or  AUighewi  people,  who  have 
left  their  name  upon  the  Alleghany  river  and 
mountains.^     The  Tallegwi  have  been  identified 

1  Work  in  Mound  Exploration  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology, 
Washington,  1887.  For  a  sight  of  the  thousands  of  ohjects 
gathered  from  the  mounds,  one  should  visit  the  Peahody  Mu- 
seum at  Camhridge  and  the  Smithsonian  Iiistitution  at  Washing- 
ton. 

2  Heckewelder,  History  of  the  Indian  Nations  of  Pennsylvania, 


111! 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


145 


witii  the  Cherokoes,  wlio  are  now  reckoned  among 
the  most  intellij^ent  and  progressive  of  Indian 
peoples.^  The  Cherokees  were  formerly  ehissed 
in  the  Muskoki  erroui),  ah)n<i|;  with  the 

"         \  "  byCherokees; 

Creeks  and  Choctaws,  but  a  closer  stutly 
of  their  language  seems  to  show  that  they  were  a 
somewhat  remote  offshoot  of  the  liuron-Iroquois 
stock.  For  a  long  time  they  occupied  the  coun- 
try between  the  Ohio  river  and  the  Great  Lakes, 
and  prol)al)ly  built  the  mounds  that  are  still  to  be 
seen  there.  Somewhere  about  the  thirteenth  or 
fourteenth  century  they  were  gradually  pushed 
southward  into  the  Muskoki  region  by  repeated 
attacks  from  the  Lenape  and  Hurons.  The  Chero- 
kees  were  probably  also  the  builders  of  the  mounds 
of  eastern  Tennessee  and  western  North  Carolina. 
They  retained  their  mound-building  habits  some 
time  after  the  white  men  ctime  upon  the  scene. 
On  the  other  hand  the  mounds  and  box-shaj)ed 
stone   graves   of  Kentucky,  Tennessee, 

.        ^    ^  ^  .  "^  .      -      '    and  by  Shaw- 

ami   northern    ijreorojia  were   probably  ^^f^»>  an'' 

other  tribes 

the  work  of  Shawnees,  and  the  stone 
graves  in  the  Delaware  valley  are  to  be  ascribed 
to  the  Lenape.  There  are  many  reasons  for  be- 
lieving that  the  mounds  of  northern  Mississippi 
were  constructed  by  Chickasaws,  and  the  burial 
tumuli  and  "  effigy  mounds  "  of  Wisconsin  by  Win- 

etc,  Philadelphia,  1818;  cf.  Squier,  Historical  and  ^fythological 
Traditions  of  the  Algonquins,  a  paper  read  before  the  New  York 
Historical  Society  in  June,  1848 ;  also  Brinton,  The  Lenape  and 
their  Legends,  Philadelphia,  1885. 

^  For  a  detailed  account  cf  their  later  history,  see  C.  C.  Royce, 
"  The  Cherokee  Nation,"  Reports  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  v. 
121-378. 


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146  THE  DISCOVEBY  OF  AMERICA. 

nebagos.  The  Minnitarees  and  Mandans  were 
also  very  likely  at  one  time  a  mound-building  peo- 
ple. 

If  this  view,  which  is  steadily  gaining  ground, 
be  correct,  our  imaginary  race  of  "  Mound-Build- 
ers "  is  broken  up  and  vanishes,  and  henceforth 
we  may  content  ourselves  with  speaking  of  the 
authors  of  the  ancient  earthworks  as  "  Indians." 
There  were  times  in  the  career  of  sundry  Indian 
tribes  when  circumstances  induced  them  to  erect 
mounds  as  sites  for  communal  houses  or  council 
houses,  medicine-lodges  or  burial-places ;  somewhat 
as  there  was  a  period  in  the  history  of  our  own  fore- 
fathers in  England  when  circumstances  led  them 
to  build  moated  castles,  with  drawbridge  and  port- 
cullis ;  and  there  is  no  more  occasion  for  assiun- 
ing  a  mysterious  race  of  "  Mound-Builders "  in 
America  than  for  assuming  a  mysterious  race  of 
"  Castle-Build  ers  "  in  England. 

Thus,  at  whatever  point  we  touch  the  subject  of 
ancient  America,  we  find  scientific  opinion  tending 
more  and  more  steadily  toward  the  conclusion  that 
its  people  and  their  culture  were  indigenous.  One 
of  the  most  important  lessons  impressed  upon  us 
Bociety  in  ^J  ^  ^^^S  »*"%  of  Comparative  mythol- 
^"rorth"''"  ogy  is  that  human  minds  in  different 
J^aXd'steges  parts  of  the  world,  but  under  the  influ- 
stiTKP^^eached  Guce  of  similar  circumstances,  develop 
Sfp.'iuerMnean  similar  idcas  and  clothe  them  in  simi- 
or«ixty  con^     l^r  fomis  of  cxprcssion.     It  is  just  the 

turies  earlier.      ^^^^     ^j^j^     political     institutions,     with 

the  development  of  the  arts,  with  social  customs, 


ANCIENT  AMERICA. 


147 


with  culture  generally.  To  repeat  the  remark 
already  quoted  from  Sir  John  Lubbock,  —  and  it 
is  well  worth  repeating,  —  "  Different  races  in 
similar  stages  of  development  often  present  more 
features  of  resemblance  to  one  another  than  the 
same  race  does  to  itself  in  different  stages  of  its 
history."  When  the  zealous  Abbe  Brasseur  found 
things  in  the  history  of  Mexico  that  reminded  him 
of  ancient  Egypt,  he  hastened  to  the  conclusion 
that  Mexican  culture  was  somehow  "  derived " 
from  that  of  Egypt.  It  was  natural  enough  for 
him  to  do  so,  but  such  methods  of  explanation  are 
now  completely  antiquated.  Mexican  culture  was 
no  more  Egyptian  culture  than  a  prickly-pear  is  a 
lotus.  It  was  an  outgrowth  of  pecidiar  American 
conditions  acting  upon  the  aboriginal  American 
mind,  and  such  of  its  features  as  remind  us  of  an- 
cient Egypt  or  prehistoric  Greece  show  simply  that 
it  was  approaching,  though  it  had  not  reached, 
the  standard  attained  in  those  Old  World  coun- 
tries. From  this  point  of  view  the  resemblances 
become  invested  with  surpassing  interest.  An- 
cient America,  as  we  have  seen,  was  a  much  more 
archaic  world  than  the  world  of  Europe  and  Asia, 
and  presented  in  the  time  of  Columbus  forms  of 
society  that  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean 
had  been  outgrown  before  the  city  of  Rome  was 
built.  Hence  the  intense  and  peculiar  fascination 
of  American  archasology,  and  its  profound  impor- 
tance to  the  student  of  general  history. 


i 


CHAPTER  n. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


There  Is  something  solemn  and  impressive  in 
the  spectacle  of  human  life  thus  going  on  for  count- 
less ages  in  the  Eastern  and  Western  halves  of  our 
planet,  each  all  unknown  to  the  other  and  uninflu- 
enced by  it.  The  contact  between  the  two  worlds 
practically  begins  in  1492. 

By  this  statement  it  is  not  meant  to  deny  that 
occasional  visitors  may  have  come  and  did  come 
before  that  famous  date  from  the  Old  World  to 
the  New.  On  the  contrary  I  am  inclined  to  sus- 
pect that  there  may  have  been  more  such  occa- 
sional visits  than  we  have  been  wont  to  suppose. 
For  the  most  part,  however,  the  subject  is  shrouded 
in  the  mists  of  obscure  narrative  and  fantastic  con- 
jecture. When  it  is  argued  that  in  the  fifth  cen- 
tury of  the  Christian  era  certain  Buddhist  mission- 
ary priests  came  from  China  by  way  of 
Kamtchatka  and  the  Aleutian  islands, 
and  kept  on  till  they  got  to  a  country  which  they 
called  Fusang,  and  which  was  really  Mexico,  one 
cannot  reply  that  such  a  thing  was  necessarily  and 
absolutely  impossible ;  but  when  other  critics  as- 
sure us  that,  after  all,  Fusang  was  really  Japan, 
perhaps  one  feels  a  slight  sense  of  relief.^     So  of 

^  This  notion  of  the  Chinese  visiting  Mexico  was  set  forth  by 


The  Chinese. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


149 


the  dim  whispers  of  voyages  to  America  under- 
taken by  the  Irish,  in  the  days  when  the  cloisters  of 
sweet  Innisfallen  were  a  centre  of  piety  and  culture 
for  northwestern  Europe,^  we  may  say 

,  1     ,     ,  .  /.      ,  •  f  •'  ,      -^      The  Irish. 

that  this  sort  oi  thing  has  not  much  to 
do  with  history,  or  history  with  it.  Irish  ancho- 
rites certainly  went  to  Iceland  in  the  seventh  cen- 
tury ,2  and  in  the  course  of  this  bock  we  shall  have 
frequent  occasion  to  observe  that  first  and  last 
there  has  been  on  all  seas  a  good  deal  of  blowing 
and  drifting  done.  It  is  credibly  reported  that 
Japanese  junks  have  been  driven  ashore  on  the 

the  celebrated  Dggiiignes  in  1761,  in  the  M^muires  de  V  Acadimie 
des  Inscriptions,  torn,  xxviii.  pp.  50t)-525.  Its  absurdity  was 
shown  by  Klaproth,  "  Recherches  sur  le  pays  de  Fou  Sang," 
Nouvelles  annates  des  voyages,  Paris,  1831,  ^  s^rie,  torn.  xxi.  pp. 
50-68  ;  see  also  Klaproth's  introduction  to  Annales  des  enipereurs 
du  Japon,  Paris,  1834,  pp.  iv.-ix. ;  Humboldt,  Examen  critique  de 
Vhistoire  de  la  g^ographie  du  uouveau  continent,  Paris,  1837,  torn, 
ii.  pp.  62-84.  The  far  ly  was  revived  by  C.  G.  Leland  ("  Hans 
Breitiuann  "),  in  his  i*.  ang,  London,  1875,  and  was  again  demol- 
ished by  the  missionary,  S.  W.  Williams,  in  the  Journal  of  the 
American  Oriental  Society,  vol.  xi ,  New  Haven,  1881. 

^  On  the  noble  work  of  the  Irish  church  and  its  missionaries  in 
the  sixth  and  seventh  centuries,  see  Montalembert,  Les  inoines 
d^ Occident,  tom.  ii.  pp.  465-661;  tom.  iii.  pp.  79-332;  Burton's 
History  of  Scotland,  vol.  i.  pp.  234-277 ,  and  the  instructive  map 
in  Miss  Sophie  Bryant's  Celtic  Ireland,  London,  1889,  p.  60.  The 
notice  of  the  subject  in  Milmau's  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  ii. 
pp.  236-247,  is  entirely  inadequate. 

'^  The  passion  for  solitude  led  some  of  the  disciples  of  St.  Co- 
luraba  to  make  their  way  from  lona  to  the  Hebrides,  and  thenoe 
to  the  Orkneys,  Shetlands,  Faroe?,  and  Iceland,  where  a  colony 
of  them  remained  until  the  arrival  of  the  Northmen  in  874.  See 
Dicuil,  Liber  de  mensura  Orbis  Terrce  (a.  d.  825),  Paris,  1807 ; 
Innes,  Scotland  in  the  Middle  Ages,  p.  101  ;  Lanigan,  Ecclesiasti- 
cal History  of  Ireland,  chap.  iii. ;  Maurer,  lieitriige  zur  liechts- 
geschichte  des  Germanischen  Nordens,  i.  35.  For  the  legend  of  St. 
Brandan,  see  GafTarel,  Les  voyages  de  St.  Brandan,  Paris,  1881. 


150 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


coasts  of  Oregon  and  California ;  ^  and  there  is  a 
Cousin,  of  story  that  in  1488  a  certain  Jean  Cousin, 
Dieppe.  q£  Dieppe^  while  sailing  down  the  west 

coast  of  Africa,  was  caught  in  a  storm  and  blown 
across  to  Brazil.^  This  was  certainly  quite  possible, 
for  it  was  not  so  very  unlike  what  happened  in 
1500  to  Pedro  Alvarez  de  Cabral,  as  we  shall  here- 
after see  ;  ^  nevertheless,  the  evidence  adduced  in 
support  of  the  story  will  hardly  bear  a  critical  ex- 
amination.* 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  weary  the  reader  with  a 
general  discussion  of  these  and  some  other  legends 
or  rumours  of  pre-Columbian  visitors  to  America. 
We  may  admit,  at  once,  that  "  there  is  no  good 
reason  why  any  one  of  them  may  not  have  done  " 

whalf  is  <?laimed,  but  at  the  same  time 
are  of  uttie      the  proof  that  any  one  of  them  did  do 

it  is  very  far  from  satisfactory.^  More- 
over the  questions  raised  are  often  of  small  impor- 
tance, and  belong  not  so  much  to  the  serious  work- 
shop of  history  as  to  its  limbo  prepared  for  learned 
trifles,  whither  we  will  hereby  relegate  them.® 

^  C.  W.  Brooks,  of  San  Francisco,  cited  in  Higginson,  Larger 
History  of  the  United  States,  p.  24. 

'■^  Desniarquets,  Memoires  chronologiques  pour  servir  a  Vhistoire 
de  Dieppe,  Paris,  1785,  torn.  i.  pp.  91-98;  Estancelin,  Recherches 
sur  les  voyages  et  d^couvertes  des  navigateurs  normands,  etc.,  Paris, 
1832,  pp.  332-361. 

*  See  below,  vol.  ii.  p.  96. 

*  As  Harrisse  says,  concerning  the  alleged  voy^es  of  Cousin  and 
others,  "Quant  aux  voyages  du  Dieppois  Jean  Cousin  en  1488, 
de  Joilo  Ramalho  en  1490,  et  de  Joao  Vaz  Cortereal  en  1404  ou 
1474,  le  lecteur  nous  pardonnera  de  les  passer  sous  silence."  Chris' 
tophe  Colonib,  Paris,  1884,  torn.  i.  p.  307. 

*  Winsor,  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist.,  i.  59. 

'  Sufficiently  full  references  may  be  found  in  Watson's  Bibli* 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


151 


But  when  we  come  to  the  voyages  of  the  North- 
men in  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centu-  buttheca«e 
ries,  it  is  quite  a  different  affair.  Not  meidgfutS'y 
only  is  this  a  subject  of  much  historic  **'*f"«"*' 
interest,  but  in  dealing  with  it  we  stand  for  a  great 
part  of  the  time  upon  firm  historic  ground.  The 
narratives  which  tell  us  of  Vinland  and  of  Leif 
Ericsson  are  closely  intertwined  with  the  authentic 
history  of  Norway  and  Iceland.  In  the  ninth  cen- 
tury of  our  era  there  was  a  process  of  political 
consolidation  going  on  in  Norway,  somewhat  as  in 
England  under  Egbert  and  his  successors.  After 
a  war  of  twelve  years.  King  Harold  Fairhair  over- 
threw the  combined  forces  of  the  Jarls,  or  small 
independent  princes,  in  the  decisive  naval  battle 
of  Hafursfiord  in  the  year  872.  This 
resulted  in  making  Harold  the  feudal  exodus  from 

Norwftv 

landlord  of  Norway.  Allodial  tenures 
were  abolished,  and  the  Jarls  were  required  to  be- 
come his  vassals.  This  consolidation  of  the  king- 
dom was  probably  beneficial  in  its  main  conse- 
quences, but  to  many  a  proud  spirit  and  crafty 
brain  it  made  life  in  Norway  unendurable.  These 
bold  Jarls  and  their  Viking  ^  followers,  to  whom, 

ography  of  the  Pre-Columbian  Discoveries  of  America,  appended 
to  Anderson's  America  not  discovered  by  Columbus,  3d  ed.,  Chi- 
cago, 1883,  pp.  121-164  ;  and  see  the  learned  chapters  by  W.  H. 
Tillin^hast  on  "The  Geographical  Knowledge  of  the  Ancients 
considered  in  relation  to  the  Discovery  of  America,"  and  by  Jus- 
tin Winsor  on  "  Pre-Colurobian  Explorations,"  in  Narr.  and  Crit. 
Hist.,  vol.  i. 

^  The  proper  division  of  this  Old  Norse  word  is  not  into  vt-king, 
but  into  vlk-ing.  The  first  syllable  means  a  "  bay"  or  "fiord," 
the  second  is  a  patronymic  termination,  so  that  "vikings"  are 
"sons  of  the  fiord,"  — an  eminently  appropriate  and  descriptivv 
name. 


162  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

as  to  the  ancient  Greeks,  the  sea  was  not  a  barrier, 
hut  a  highway,^  had  no  mind  to  stay  at  home  and 
submit  to  unwonted  thraldom.  So  they  manned 
their  dragon-prowed  keels,  invoked  the  blessing  of 
Wodan,  god  of  storms,  upon  their  enterprise,  and 
sailed  away.  Some  went  to  reinforce  their  kins- 
men who  were  making  it  so  hot  for  Alfred  in  Eng- 
land ^  and  for  Charles  the  Bald  in  Gaul ;  some 
had  already  visited  Ireland  and  were  establishing 
themselves  at  Dublin  and  Limerick ;  others  now 
followed  and  found  homes  for  themselves  in  the 
Hebrides  and  all  over  Scotland  north  of  glorious 
Loch  Linnhe  and  the  Murray  frith;  some  made 
their  way  through  the  blue  Mediterranaan  to 
"  Micklegard,"  the  Great  City  of  the  Byzantine 
Emperor,  and  in  his  service  wielded  their  stout  axes 
against  Magyar  and  Saracen  ;  ^  some  found  their 
amphibious  natures  better  satisfied  upon  the  islands 
of  the  Atlantic  ridge,  —  the  Orkneys,  Shetlands, 

^  Curtius  (Griechische  Etymologie,  p.  237)  connects  vSvros  with 
irdroi;  compare  the  Homeric  expressions  vypii  KtKevda,  ixOv6evTa 
K(\cv6a,  etc. 

^  The  descendants  of  these  Northmen  formed  a  very  large  pro- 
portion of  the  population  of  the  East  Anglian  counties,  and  con- 
sequently of  the  men  who  founded  New  England.  The  East  An- 
glian counties  have  been  conspicuous  for  resistance  to  tyranny 
and  for  freedom  of  thought.  See  my  Beginnings  of  New  Eng- 
land, p.  62. 

^  They  were  the  Varangian  g^iard  at  Constantinople,  descnbed 
by  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  Count  Robert  of  Paris.  About  this  same 
time  their  kinsmen,  the  Russ,  moving  eastward  from  Sweden, 
were  subjecting  Slavic  tribes  as  far  as  Novgorod  and  Kief,  and 
laying  the  foundations  of  the  power  tliat  has  since,  through  many 
and  strange  vicissitudes,  developed  into  Russia.  See  Thomsen, 
The  Relations  between  Ancient  Russia  and  Scandinavia,  Oxford, 
1877. 


1 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


153 


and  Faeroes,  and  especially  noble  Iceland.     There 
an  aristocratic  repuV^'c  soon  grew  up, 
owning  slight  and  indefinite  allegiance  icei  md,  a.  d, 
to  the  kings  of  Norway.^     The  settle- 
ment of  Iceland  was  such  a  wholesale  colonization 
of  communities  of  picked  men  as  had  not  been 
seen  since  ancient  Greek  times,  and  was  not  to  be 
seen  again  until  Winthrop  sailed  into  Massachu- 
setts Bay.     It  was  not  long  before  the  population 
of   Iceland  exceeded  50,000  soids.      Their  sheep 
and  cattle  flourished,  hay  crops  were  heavy,  a  lively 
trade  —  with  fish,  oil,  butter,  skins,  and  wool,  in 
exchange  for  meal  and  malt  —  was  kept  up  with 
Norway,  Denmark,  and  the  British  islands,  polit- 
ical  freedom  was   unimpaired,*  justice   was  (for 

^  Fealty  to  Norway  was  not  formally  declared  until  1262. 

*  The  settlement  of  Iceland  is  celebrated  by  Robert  Lowe  ip 
verses  which  show  that,  whatever  his  opinion  may  have  been  io 
later  years  as  to  the  use  of  a  classical  education,  his  own  earlj 
studies  must  always  hare  been  a  source  of  comfort  to  him:  — 

Xaipe  KaC  iv  ve(l>e\a.i.(Ti  Kai  iv  vi()>dSea<T(.  /3ap<i'ait 

Kai  nvpl  Kai  aeicr/uots  vijae  troAeuo/xeVi;' 
'Ecdafie  yh.p  j3a(nA^o«  itnip^iov  v/3pip  dAOf  a; 

AVjjLios  'YntpPopfUii',  KOdfiov   in  i<T\aTij}, 
AvTapxri  pioTov  Oeiuiv  r'  cpetfi'afiaTa  Movtruf 

Kai  6€(Tixovi  ayvTii  tipev  eAeuOepi'as. 

These  verses  are  thus  rendered  by  Sir  Edmund  Head  {Viga 
Glums  Saga,  p.  v.) :  — 

"  Hail,  Isle !  with  mist  and  snowstormB  (;irt  around. 
Where  fire  and  eartliquake  rend  the  shattered  ground,  — 
Here  once  o'er  furthest  ocean's  icy  path 
The  Northmen  fled  a  tyrant  monarch's  wrath  : 
Here,  cheered  by  song  and  story,  dwelt  they  free, 
And  held  unscathed  their  laws  and  liberty." 

Laing  (Heimskringla,  vol.  i.  p.  57)  couples  Iceland  and  New  Eng- 
land as  the  two  modern  colonies  most  distinctly  "  founded  on 
principle  and  peopled  at  first  from  higher  motives  than  want  or 
gam." 


t64  rUE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

the  Middle  Ages)  fairly  well  administered,  naval 
superiority  kept  all  foes  at  a  distance  ;  and  under 
such  conditions  the  growth  of  the  new  community 
in  wealth  ^  and  culture  was  surprisingly  rapid.  In 
the  twelfth  century,  before  literature  had  begun  to 
blossom  in  the  modern  speech  of  France  or  Spain 
or  Italy,  there  was  a  flourishing  literature  in  prose 
and  verse  in  Iceland.  Especial  attention  was  paid 
to  history,  and  the  "  Landnama-bok,"  or  statistical 
and  genealogical  account  of  the  early  settlers,  was 
the  most  complete  and  careful  work  of  the  kind 
which  had  ever  been  undertaken  by  any  people 
down  to  quite  recent  times.  Few  persons  in  our 
day  adequately  realize  the  extent  of  the  early 
Icelandic  literature  or  its  richness.  The  poems, 
legends,  and  histories  earlier  than  the  date  when 
Dante  walked  and  mused  in  the  streets  of  Flor- 
ence survive  for  us  now  in  some  hundreds  of  works, 
for  the  most  part  of  rare  and  absorbing  interest. 
The  "  Heimskringla,"  or  chronicle  of  Snorro  Sturle- 
son,  written  about  1215,  is  one  of  the  greatest  his- 
tory books  in  the  world.^ 

*  Just  what  was  then  considered  wealth,  for  an  individual,  may 
best  be  understood  by  a  concrete  instance.  The  historian  Snorro 
Sturleson,  born  in  1178,  was  called  a  rich  man.  "  In  one  year,  in 
which  fodder  was  scarce,  he  lost  120  head  of  oxen  without  being 
seriously  affected  by  it."  The  fortune  which  he  got  with  his  first 
wife  Herdisa,  in  1199,  was  equivalent  nominally  to  $4,000,  or, 
according  to  the  standard  of  to-day,  about  $80,000.  Laing, 
Heimskringla,  vol.  i.  pp.  191,  193. 

^  Laing's  excellent  English  translation  of  it  was  published  in 
London  in  1844.  The  preliminary  dissertation,  in  five  chapters, 
is  of  great  value.  A  new  edition,  revised  by  Prof.  Rasmus  An- 
derson, was  published  in  London  in  1889.  Another  charming 
book  is  Sir  George  Dasent's  Story  of  Burnt  Njal,  Edinburgh, 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


155 


Now  from  various  Icelandic  chronicles  ^  we  learn 
that  in  876,  only  two  years  after  the  island  com- 


1861,  2  vols.,  translated  from  the  Njals  Saga.  Both  the  saga 
itself  and  the  translator's  learned  introduction  give  an  admirable 
description  of  life  in  Iceland  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  century,  the 
time  when  the  voyages  to  America  were  made.  It  is  a  very  in- 
structive chapter  in  history. 

The  Icelanders  of  the  present  day  retain  the  Old  Norse  lan- 
gfuage,  while  on  the  Continent  it  has  been  modified  into  Swedish 
and  Norwegian-Danish.  They  are  a  well-educated  people,  and, 
in  proportion  to  their  numbers,  publish  many  books. 

^  A  full  collection  of  these  chronicles  is  pven  in  Raf  n's  Antiqui- 
iates  AmericancB,  Copenhagen,  1837,  in  the  original  Icelandic, 
with  Danish  and  Latin  translations.  This  book  is  of  great  value 
for  its  full  and  careful  reproduction  of  original  texts  ;  although 
the  rash  speculations  and  the  want  of  critical  discernment  shown 
in  the  editor's  efforts  to  determine  the  precise  situation  of  Vin- 
land  have  done  much  to  discredit  the  whole  subject  in  the  eyes 
of  many  scholars.  That  is,  however,  very  apt  to  be  the  case 
with  first  attempts,  like  Rafn's,  and  the  obvious  defects  of  his 
work  should  not  be  allowed  to  blind  us  to  its  merits.  In  the  foot- 
notes to  the  present  chapter  I  shall  cite  it  simply  as  "  Raf  n ;  "  as 
the  exact  phraseology  is  often  important,  I  shall  usually  cite  the 
original  Icelandic,  and  (for  the  benefit  of  readers  unfamiliar  with 
that  language)  shall  also  give  the  Latin  version,  which  has  been 
well  made,  and  quite  happily  reflects  the  fresh  and  pithy  vigour 
of  the  original.  An  English  translation  of  all  the  essential  parts 
may  be  found  in  De  Costa,  Pre-Colunbian  Discovery  of  America 
by  the  Northmen,  2d  ed.,  Albany,  1890 ;  see  also  Slaf  ter.  Voyages 
of  the  Northmen  to  America,  Boston,  1877  (Prince  Society).  An 
Icelandic  version,  interpolated  in  Peringskiold's  edition  of  the 
Heimskringla,  1697,  is  translated  in  Laing,  vol.  iii.  pp.  344-361. 

The  first  modem  writer  to  call  attention  to  the  Icelandic  voy- 
ages to  Greenland  and  Vinland  was  Arngrim  J6ns8on,  in  his  Cry- 
mogvea,  Hamburg,  1610,  and  more  explicitly  in  his  Specimen 
IslandivE  historicum,  Amsterdam,  1643.  The  voyages  are  also 
mentioned  by  Campanius,  in  his  Eort  heskrifning  om  provincien 
Nya  Swerige  uti  America,  Stockholm,  1702.  The  first,  however, 
to  bring  the  subject  prominently  before  European  readers  was 
that  judicious  scholar  Thormodus  Torfaeus,  in  his  two  books  Hist 
toria  Vinlandice  antiquce,  and  Historia  Gronlandioe  antiquce,  Co* 


156 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


monwealth  was  founded,  one  of  the  settlers  named 
Gunnbjorn  was  driven  by  foul  weather 

DiscovGrv  of 

Greenland,       to  some  poiut  on  the  coast  of  Green- 

land,  where  he  and  his  crew  contrived 

to  pass  the  winter,  their  ship  being  locked  in  ice  j 


m  > 


lilii 


penhagen,  1705  and  1706.  Later  writers  have  until  very  recently 
added  but  little  that  is  important  to  tho  work  of  Torfseus.  In 
the  voluminous  literature  of  the  subject  the  discussions  chiefly 
■worthy  of  mention  are  Forster's  Geschichte  der  Entdeckungen  und 
Schiffahrten  im  Norden,  Frankfort,  1784,  pp.  44-88 ;  and  Hum- 
boldt, Examen  critique,  etc.,  Paris,  1837,  torn.  i.  pp.  84-104;  see, 
also.  Major,  Select  Letters  of  Columbus,  London,  1847  (Hakluyt 
Soc)  pp.  xii.-xxi.  The  fifth  chapter  of  Samuel  Laing's  prelimi- 
nary dissertation  to  the  Heimskringla,  which  is  devoted  to  this 
subject,  is  full  of  good  sense ;  for  the  most  part  the  shrewd  Ork- 
neyman  gets  at  the  core  of  the  thing,  though  now  and  then  a 
little  closer  knowledge  of  America  would  have  been  useful  to 
him.  The  latest  critical  discussion  of  the  sources,  marking  a 
very  decided  advance  since  Rafn's  time,  is  the  paper  by  Gustav 
Storm,  professor  of  history  in  the  University  of  Christiania, 
*'  Studier  over  Vinlandsreiseme,"  in  Aarb^er  for  Nordisk  Old- 
kyndighed  og  Hixtorie,  Copenhagen,  1887,  pp.  293-372. 

Since  tbia  chapter  was  written  I  have  seen  an  English  transla- 
tion of  the  valuable  paper  just  mentioned,  "  Studies  on  the  Vine- 
land  Voyages,"  in  Mimoires  de  la  socifti  royale  des  antiquaires  da 
Nord,  Copenhagen,  1888,  pp.  307-370.  I  have  therefore  in  most 
cases  altered  my  footnote  references  below,  making  the  page- 
numbers  refer  to  the  English  version  (in  which,  by  the  way 
some  parts  of  the  Norwegian  original  are,  for  no  very  obvious  rea- 
son, omitted).  By  an  odd  coincidence  there  comes  to  me  at  the 
same  time  a  book  fresh  from  the  press,  whose  rare  beauty  of 
mechanical  workmanship  is  fully  equalled  by  its  intrinsic  merit. 
The  Finding  of  Wineland  the  Good  —  the  History  of  the  Icelandic 
Discovery  of  America,  edited  and  translated  from  the  earliest 
records  by  Arthur  Middleton  Reeves,  London,  1890.  This 
beautiful  quarto  contains  phototype  plates  of  the  original  Ice- 
landic vellums  in  the  Hauks-bcSk,  the  MS.  AM.  557,  and  the 
Flateyar-bdk,  together  with  the  texts  carefully  edited,  an  admi- 
rable English  translation,  and  several  cliapters  of  critical  discus- 
sion decidedly  better  than  anything  that  Las  gone  before  it.    0a 


1' 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


157 


Chi 


when  the  spring  set  them  free,  they  returned  to 
Iceland.  In  the  year  983  Eric  the  Red,  a  settler 
upon  Oxney  (Ox-island)  near  the  mouth  of  Brei- 
dafiord,  was  outlawed  for  killing  a  man  in  a 
brawl.  Eric  then  determined  to  search  for  the 
western  land  which  Gunnbjorn  had  discovered. 
He  set  out  with  a  few  followers,  and  in  the  next 
three  years  these  bold  sailors  explored  the  coasts 
of  Greeidand  pretty  thorougldy  for  a  Considerable 
distance  on  each  side  of  Cape  Farewell.  At 
length  they  found  a  suitable  place  for  a  home,  at 
the  head  of  Igaliko  fiord,  not  far  from  the  site  of 
the  modern  Julianeshaab.^  It  was  fit  work  for 
Vikings  to  penetrate  so  deep  a  fiord  and  find  out 
such  a  spot,  hidden  as  it  is  by  miies  upon  miles  of 
craggy  and  ice-covered  headlands.  They  proved 
their  sagacity  by  pitching  upon  one  of  the  pleasant- 
est  spots  on  the  gaunt  Greenland  coast ;  and  there 
upon  a  smooth  grassy  plain  may  still  be  seen  the 
ruins  of  seventeen  houses  built  of  rough  blocks  of 
sandstone,  their  chinks  caulked  up  with 
clay  and  gravel.  In  contrast  with  most  in  Greenland, 
of  its  bleak  surroundings  the  place 
might  well  be  called  Greenland,  and  so  Eric  named 
it,  for,  said  he,  it  is  well  to  have  a  pleasant  name 
if  we  would  induce  people  to  come  hither.  The 
name  thus  given  by  Eric  to  this  chosen  spot  has 

readirg  it  carefully  through,  it  seem8  to  me  the  best  book  we 
have  on  the  subject  in  English,  or  perhaps  in  any  language. 

Since  the  above  was  written,  the  news  has  come  of  the  sudden 
and  dreadful  death  of  Mr.  Reeves,  in  the  railroad  disaster  at  Ha- 
gerstown,  Indiana,  February  25, 1891.  Mr.  Reeves  was  an  Amer- 
ican scholar  of  most  brilliant  promise,  only  in  his  thirty-fifth  year. 

^  Rink,  Danish  Greenland,  p.  6. 


!  'i 


158 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


been  extended  in  modern  usage  to  the  whole  of 
the  vast  continental  region  north  of  Davis  strait, 
for  the  greater  part  of  which  it  is  a  flagrant  mis- 
nomer.^ In  986  Eric  ventured  back  to  Iceland, 
and  was  so  successful  in  enlisting  settlers  for 
Greenland  that  on  his  return  voyage  he  started 
with  five  and  twenty  sliips.  The  loss  from  foul 
weather  and  icebergs  was  cruel.  Eleven  vessels 
were  lost ;  the  remaining  fourteen,  carrying  prob- 
ably from  four  to  five  hundred  souls,  arrived  safely 
at  the  head  of  Igaliko  fiord,  and  began  building 
their  houses  at  the  place  called  Brattahlid.  Their 
settlement  presently  extended  over  the  head  of 
Tunnudliorbik  fiord,  the  next  deep  inlet  to  the 
northwest ;  they  called  it  Ericsfiord.  After  a 
while  it  extended  westward  as  far  as  Immartinek, 
and  eastward  as  far  as  the  site  of  Friedrichsthal ; 
and  another  distinct  settlement  of  less  extent  was 
also  made  about  four  hundred  miles  to  the  north- 
west, near  the  present  site  of  Godthaab.  The 
older  settlement,  which  began  at  Igaliko  fiord,  was 
known  as  the  East  Bygd  ;  ^  the  younger  settlement, 
near  Godthaab,  was  called  the  West  Bygd. 

^  We  thus  see  the  treacheronsness  of  one  of  the  arguments 
cited  by  the  illustrious  Arago  to  prove  that  the  Greenland  coast 
must  be  colder  now  than  in  the  tenth  century.  The  Icelanders, 
he  thinks,  called  it  "  a  green  land  "  because  of  its  verdure,  and 
therefore  it  must  have  been  warmer  than  at  present.  But  the 
land  which  Eric  called  green  was  evidently  nothing  more  than 
the  region  about  Julianeshaab,  which  still  has  plenty  of  verdure  ; 
and  so  the  argument  falls  to  the  ground.  See  Arago,  Sur  V^tat 
thermomitrique  du  globe  terrestre,  in  his  (Euvres,  torn.  v.  p.  243. 
There  are  reasons,  however,  for  believing  that  Greenland  waa 
•warmer  in  the  tenth  century  than  at  present.    See  below,  p.  11Q. 

'^  The  map  is  reduced  from  Raf  n's  Antiquitates  AmericancB,  tab. 
The  ruins  dotted  here  and  there  upon  it  have  been  knowB 


XY. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


159 


This  colonization  of  Greenland  by  the  North- 
men in  the  tenth  century  is  as  well  established  as 
any  event  that  occurred  in  the  Middle  Ages.  For 
four  hundred  years  the  fortunes  of  the  Greenland 
colony  formed  a  part,  albeit  a  very  humble  part, 
of  European  history.  Geographically  speaking, 
Greenland  is  reckoned  as  a  part  of  America,  of 

ever  since  the  last  rediscovery  of  Greenland  in  1721,  but  until 
after  1831  they  were  generally  supposed  to  be  the  ruins  of  the 
West  Bygd.  After  the  fifteenth  century,  when  the  old  colony 
had  perished,  and  its  existence  Lad  become  a  naere  literary 
tradition,  there  grew  up  a  notion  that  the  names  East  Bygd 
and  West  Bygd  indicated  that  the  two  settlements  must  have 
been  respectively  eastward  and  westward  of  Cape  Farewell; 
and  after  1721  much  time  was  wasted  in  looking  for  vestiges  of 
human  habitations  on  the  barren  and  ice-bound  eastern  coast. 
At  length,  in  1828-31,  the  exploring  expedition  sent  out  by  the 
Danish  government,  under  the  very  able  and  intelligent  Captain 
Graah,  demonstrated  that  both  settlements  were  west  of  Cape 
Farewell,  and  that  the  ruins  here  indicated  upon  the  map  are  the 
ruins  of  the  East  Bygd.  It  now  became  apparent  that  a  certain 
description  of  Greenland  by  Ivar  Bardsen  —  written  in  Greenland 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  generally  accessible  to  European 
scholars  since  the  end  of  the  sixteenth,  but  not  held  in  much 
esteem  before  Captain  Graah's  expedition  —  was  quite  accurate 
and  extremely  valuable.  From  Bardsen's  description,  about 
which  we  shall  have  more  to  say  hereafter,  we  can  point  out  upon 
the  map  the  ancient  sites  with  much  confidence.  Of  those  men- 
tioned in  the  present  work,  the  bishop's  church,  or  "  cathedral  " 
(a  view  of  which  is  given  below,  p.  222),  was  at  Kakortok.  The 
village  of  Gardar,  which  gave  its  name  to  the  bishopric,  was  at 
Kaksiarsuk,  at  the  northeastern  extremity  of  Igaliko  fiord.  Op- 
posite Kaksiarsuk,  on  the  western  fork  of  the  fiord,  the  reader  will 
observe  a  ruined  church ;  that  marks  the  site  of  Brattahlid.  The 
fiord  of  Igaliko  was  called  by  the  Northmen  Einarafiord ;  and 
that  of  Tunnudliorbik  was  their  Ericsfiord.  The  monastery  of  St. 
Glaus,  visited  by  Nicol6  Zeno  (see  below,  p.  240),  is  supposed  by 
Mr.  Major  to  have  been  situated  near  the  lisblink  at  the  bottom 
of  Tessermiut  fiord,  between  the  east  shore  of  the  fiord  and  the 
Bmall  lak^  indicated  on  the  map. 


160 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


111  III 


iiK^.> 


The  East  Bygd,  or  Eaatern  Settlement 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


161 


*y 


I 


iff^'^^ 


/ 


•f  the  Northmen  in  Greenland. 


162 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


'  <•■* 


the  western  hemisphere,  and  not  of  the  eastern. 
The  Northmen  who  settled  in  Greenland  had,  there- 
fore, in  this  sense  found  their  way  to  America. 
Nevertheless  one  rightly  feels  that  in  the  history 
of  geographical  discovery  an  arrival  of  Europeans 
in  Greenland  is  equivalent  merely  to  reaching  the 
vestibule  or  ante-chamber  of  the  western  hemi- 
sphere. It  is  an  affair  begun  and  ended  outside 
of  the  great  world  of  the  red  men. 

But  the  story  does  not  end  here.  Into  the  world 
of  the  red  men  the  voyagers  from  Iceland  did  as- 
suredly come,  as  indeed,  after  once  getting  a  foot- 
hold upon  Greenland,  they  could  hardly  fail  to  do. 
Let  us  pursue  the  remainder  of  the  story  as  we 
find  it  in  our  Icelandic  sources  of  information,  and 
afterwards  it  will  be  proper  to  inquire  into  the 
credibility  of  these  sources. 

One  of  the  men  who  accompanied  Eric  to 
Greenland  was  named  Herjulf,  whose  son  Bjarni, 
after  roving  the  seas  for  some  years,  came  home  to 
Iceland  in  986  to  drink  the  Yuletide  ale  with  his 
father.  Finding  him  gone,  he  weighed  anchor 
and  started  after  him  to  Greenland,  but  encoun- 
tered foggy  weather,  and  sailed  on  for  many  days 
by  guess-work  without  seeing  sun  or 
BjS*Her-      staTS.     Whcu  at  length  he  sighted  land 

julfBon,  986.         .,  1  'ii         i  J     •  1 

it  was  a  shore  without  mountains,  show- 
ing only  small  heights  covered  with  dense  woods. 
It  was  evidently  not  the  land  of  fiords  and  glaciers 
for  v/hich  Bjarni  was  looking.  So  without  stopping 
to  make  explorations  he  turned  his  prow  to  the 
north  and  kept  on.  The  sky  was  now  fair,  and 
after  scudding  nine  or  ten  days  with  a  brisk  breeze 


iiCjf'.' 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


163 


Ito 
s 
r 

in- 
s 
r 
d 
sv- 
s. 
s 

g 

lie 
A 

6 


astern,  Bjarni  saw  tlie  icy  crags  of  Greenland 
looming  up  before  him,  and  after  some  further 
searching  found  his  way  to  his  father's  new  home.^ 
On  the  route  he  more  than  once  sighted  land  on 
the  larboard. 

This  adventure  of  Bjarni's  seems  not  to  have 
excited  general  curiosity  or  to  have  awakened 
speculation.  Indeed,  in  the  dense  geographical 
ignorance  of  those  times  there  is  no  reason  why  it 
should  have  done  so.  About  994  Bjarni  was  in 
Norway,  and  one  or  two  people  expressed  some 
surprise  that  he  did  not  fcake  more  pains  to  learn 
something  about  the  country  he  had  seen ;  but 
nothing  came  of  such  talk  tiU  it  reached  the  ears 
of  Leif,  the  famous  son  of  Eric  the  Red.  This 
wise  and  stately  man  -  spent  a  year  or  two  in  Nor- 
way about  998.  Roman  missionary  priests  were 
then  preaching  up  and  down  the  land,  conversion  of 
and  had  converted  the  king,  Olaf  Tryg-  S  c£utlr° 
gvesson,  great-grandson  of  Harold  Fair-  '*^' 
hair.  Leif  became  a  Christian  and  was  baptised, 
and  when  he  returned  to  Greenland  he  took  priests 
with  him  who  converted  many  people,  though  old 
Eric,  it  is  said,  preferred  to  go  in  the  way  of  his 
fathers,  and  deemed  boisterous  Valhalla,  with  its 
cups  of  wassail,  a  place  of  better  cheer  than  the 
New  Jerusalem,  with  its  streets  of  gold. 

^  In  Herjulfsfiord,  at  the  entrance  to  which  the  modem 
Friedrichsthal  is  situated.  Across  the  fiord  from  Friedrichsthal 
a  mined  church  stands  upon  the  cape  formerly  known  as  Her- 
julfsness.     See  map. 

■^ ' '  licif r  var  mikill  madhr  ok  sterkr,  manna  skoruligastr  at  ayA, 
vitr  madhr  ok  g6dhr  h6f  smadhr  ura  alia  hluti,"  i.  e.  "  Leif 
was  a  larppe  man  and  strong,  of  noble  aspect,  prudent  and  mod' 
erate  in  all  thin^."     Rafn,  p.  33. 


I 


164 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Helluland. 


Leif's  zeal  for  the  conversion  of  his  friends  in 
Greenland  did  not  so  far  occupy  his  mind  as  to 
prevent  hira  from  undertaking  a  voyage  of  dis- 
covery. Kis  curiosity  had  been  stimulated  by 
what  he  had  heard  about  Bjarni's  experiences,  and 
he  made  up  his  min^"  to  go  and  see  what  the  coasts 
to  the  south  of  Greenland  were  like.  He  sailed 
Leif  Erica-  f  rom  Brattahlid  —  probably  in  the  sum- 
1000.  '    mer  or  early  autumn  of  the  year  1000  ^ 

—  with  a  crew  of  five  and  thirty  men.  Some 
distance  to  the  southward  they  came  upon  a  barren 
country  covered  with  big  flat  stones,  so  that  they 
called  it  Helluland,  or  "  slate-land." 
There  is  little  room  for  doubt  that  this 
was  the  coast  opposite  Greenland,  either  west  or 
east  of  the  strait  of  Belle  Isle ;  in  other  words, 
it  was  either  Labrador  or  the  northern  coast  of 
Newfoundland.  Thence,  keeping  generally  to  the 
souti.  A^ard,  our  explorers  came  after  some  days  to 
a  thickly  wooded  coast,  where  they  landed  and 
inspected  the  country.  What  chiefly  impressed 
them  was  the  extent  of  the  forest,  so  that  they 
called  the  place  Markland,  or  "  wood-land."  Some 
critics  have  supposed  that  this  spot  was 
somewhere  upon  the  eastern  or  southern 
coast   of    Newfoundland,   but  the   more    general 

^  The  year  seems  to  have  been  that  in  which  Christianity  was 
definitely  established  by  law  in  Iceland,  viz.,  A.  d.  1000.  The 
chronicle  Thattr  Eireks  Raudha  is  careful  about  verifying  its  dates 
by  checking  one  against  another.  See  Rafn,  p.  15.  The  most 
niasterlj  work  on  the  conversion  of  the  Scandinavian  people  is 
Maurer's  Die  Bekehrung  des  Norwegischen  Stammes  zum  Chris- 
tenthuine,  Alunich,  1855 ;  for  an  account  of  the  missionary  work 
in  Iceland  and  Greenland,  see  vol,  i.  pp.  191  -242,  443-452. 


Markland. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN    VOYAGES. 


165 


opinion  places  it  somewhere  upon  the  coast  of 
Cape  Breton  island  or  Nova  Scotia.  From  this 
Markland  our  vroyagers  stood  out  to  sea,  and  run- 
ning briskly  before  a  stiff  northeaster  it  was  more 
than  two  days  before  they  came  in  sight  of  land. 
Then,  after  following  the  coast  for  a  while,  they 
went  ashore  at  a  place  where  a  river,  issuing  from 
a  lake,  fell  into  the  sea.  They  brought  their  ship 
up  into  the  lake  and  cast  anchor.  The  water 
abounded  in  excellent  fish,  and  the  country  seemed 
so  pleasant  that  Leif  decided  to  pass  the  winter 
there,  and  accordingly  his  men  put  up  some  com- 
fortable wooden  huts  or  booths.  One  day  one  of 
the  party,  a  "  south  country  "  man,  whose  name 
>vas  Tyrker,^  came  in  from  a  ramble  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood making  grimaces  and  talking  to  himself 
in  his  own  language  (probably  Ger- 
man), which  his  comrades  did  not  under- 
stand.   On  being  interrogated  as  to  the  cause  of  his 


*  The  name  means  "  Turk,"  and  has  served  as  a  touchstone  for 
the  dullness  of  commentators.  To  the  Northmen  a  "  Southman  " 
would  naturally  be  a  German,  and  why  should  a  German  be  called 
a  Turk  ?  or  how  should  these  Northmen  happen  to  have  had  a 
Turk  in  their  company  ?  Mr.  Laing  suggests  that  he  may  have 
been  a  Magyar.  Yes  ;  or  he  may  have  visited  the  Eastern  Empire 
and  taken  part  in  a  fight  against  Turks,  and  so  have  got  a  soubri- 
quet, just  as  Thorhall  Gamlason,  after  returning  from  Vinland 
to  Iceland,  was  ever  afterward  known  as  "  the  Viulander."  That 
did  not  mean  that  he  was  an  American  redskin.  See  below,  p.  203. 
From  Tyrker's  grimaces  one  commentator  sagely  infera  that  he 
had  been  eating  grapes  and  got  drunk  ;  and  another  (even  Mr. 
Laing ! )  thinks  it  necessary  to  remind  us  that  all  the  grape-juice 
in  Vinland  would  not  fuddle  a  man  unless  it  had  been  fermented, 
—  and  then  goes  on  to  ascribe  the  absurdity  to  our  innocent  chron- 
icle, instead  of  the  stupid  aunotator.  See  Heimskrintf  %,  vol.  L  p 
168. 


166 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


excitement,  he  replied  that  he  had  discovered  vines 
loaded  with  grapes,  and  was  much  pleased  at  the 
sight  inasmuch  as  he  had  been  brought  up  in  a 
vine  country.  Wild  grapes,  indeed,  abounded  in 
this  autumn  season,  and  Leif  accordingly  called  the 
country  Viidand.  The  winter  seems  to  have  passed 
off  very  comfortably.  Even  the  weather  seemed 
mild  to  these  visitors  from  high  latitudes,  and  they 
did  not  fail  to  comment  on  the  unusual  length  of 
the  winter  day.  Their  language  on  this  point  has 
been  so  construed  as  to  make  the  length  of  the 
shortest  winter  da}"^  exactly  nine  hours,  which 
would  place  their  Vinland  in  about  the  latitude  of 
Boston.  But  their  expressions  do  not  admit  of 
any  such  precise  construction  ;  and  when  we  re- 
member that  they  had  no  accurate  instruments  for 
measuring  time,  and  that  a  difference  of  about 
fourteen  minutes  between  sunrise  and  sunset  on 
the  shortest  winter  day  would  make  all  the  differ- 
ence between  Boston  and  Halifax,  we  see  how  idle 
it  is  to  look  for  the  requisite  precision  in  narratives 
of  this  sort,  and  to  treat  them  as  one  would  treat 
the  reports  of  a  modern  scientific  exploring  expe- 
dition. 

In  the  spring  of  1001  Leif  returned  to  Green- 
land with  a  cargo  of  timber.^  The  voyage  made 
much  talk.     Leif's  brother  Thorvald  caught  the 


'M'% 


^  On  the  homeward  voyage  he  rescued  some  shipwrecked  sail- 
ors near  the  coiist  of  Greenland,  and  was  thenceforward  called 
Leif  the  Lucky  (et  postea  cognorainatus  est  Leivus  Fortunatus). 
Tha  pleasant  reports  from  the  newly  found  country  gave  it  the 
name  of  "  Vinland  the  Good."  In  the  course  of  the  winter  foli 
lowing  Leif's  return  his  father  died.  '' 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


167 


inspiration,^  and,  borrowii:^  Leif's  ship,  sailed  in 
1002,  and  succeeded  in  finding  Vinland  and  Leif's 
huts,  where  his  men  spent  two  winters.     In   the 
intervening   summer   they  went   on  an  voy8j?e8of 
exploring   expedition   along  the  coast,  SrSn,*"** 
fell  in  with  some  savages  in  canoes,  and  ^"^^"^• 
got  into  a  fight  in  which  Thorvald  was  killed  by 
an  arrow.      In  the   spring  of  1004   the  ship  re- 
turned to  Brattahlid.    Next  year  the  tliird  brother, 
Thorstein  Ericsson,  set  out  in  the  same  ship,  with 
his  wife  Gudrid  and  a  crew  of  thirty-five  men ; 
but  they  were  sore  bestead  with  foul  weather,  got 
nowhere,  and   accomplished   nothing.      Thorstein 
died  on  the  voyage,  and  his  widow  returned  to 
Greenland. 

In  the  course  of  the  next  summer,  1006,  there 
came  to  Brattahlid  from  Iceland  a  notable  person- 
age, a  man  of  craft  and  resource,  wealthy  withal 
and  well  born,  with  the  blood  of  many  kinglets 
or  jarls  flowing  in  his  veins.  This  man,  Thor- 
finii  Karlsefni,  straightway  fell  in  love  with  the 
young  and  beautiful  widow  Gudrid,  and  in  the 
course  of  the  winter  there  was  a  merry  wedding  at 
Brattahlid.  Persuaded  by  his  adventurous  bride, 
whose  spirit  had  been  roused  by  the  re- 

^  "^  Thorflnn 

ports  from  Vinland  and  by  her  former  Karisefni,  and 

^       '  •        rr\  ^'*  uiisuccesa- 

unsuccessful  attempt  to    find  it,  Thor-  f"i  attempt  to 

•*■  ^    ^  found  a  colony 

finn  now  undertook  to  visit  that  country  i^i^!?"'*' 

in  force    sufficient  for  founding  a  col- 

;)ny  there.     Accordingly  in  the  spring  of  1007  he 


1  << 


Jam  crebri  de  Leivi  in  Vinlandiam  profectione  sermones 
serebantur,  Thorvaldus  vero,  frater  ejus,  nimis  pauca  terra  loca 
ezplorata  fuisse  judicavit."     Ha£n,  p.  39. 


168 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


It. 


started  with  three  or  four  ships,^  carrying  one  hun. 
dred  and  sixty  men,  several  women,  and  quite  a 
cargo  of  cattle.  In  the  course  of  that  year  his  son 
Snorro  was  born  in  Vinland,^  and  our  chronicle 
tells  us  that  this  child  was  three  years  old  before 
the  disappointed  company  turned  their  backs  upon 
that  land  of  promise  and  were  fain  to  make  their 
way  homeward  to  the  fiords  of  Greenland.  It 
was  the  hostility  of  the  natives  that  compelled 
Thorfiim  to  abandon  his  enterprise.  At  first  they 
traded  with  him,  bartering  valuable  furs  for  little 
strips  of  scarlet  cloth  which  they  sought  most 
eagerly  ;  and  they  were  as  terribly  frightened  by 
his  cattle  as  the  Aztecs  were  in  later  days  by  the 
Spanish  horses.^  The  chance  bellowing  of  a  bidl 
sent  them  squalling  to  the  woods,  and  they  did 
not  show  themselves  again  for  three  weeks.  After 
a  while  quarrels   arose,  the  natives  attacked   in 

1  Three  is  the  number  iisually  given,  but  at  least  four  of  their 
ships  would  be  needed  for  so  large  a  company  ;  and  besides 
Thorfinn  himself,  three  other  captains  are  mentioned,  —  Snorro 
Thorbrandsson,  Bjarni  Grimolfsson,  and  Thorhall  Gamlason. 
The  narrative  gives  a  picturesque  account  of  this  Thorhall,  who 
was  a  pagan  and  fond  of  deriding  his  comrades  for  their  belief  in 
the  new-fangled  Christian  notions.  He  seems  to  have  left  his 
comrades  and  returned  to  Europe  before  they  had  abandoned 
their  enterprise.  A  further  reference  to  him  will  be  made  below, 
p.  203. 

2  To  this  boy  Snorro  many  eminent  men  have  traced  their  an- 
cestry, —  bishops,  university  professors,  governors  of  Iceland, 
and  ministers  of  state  in  Norway  and  Denmark.  The  learned 
antiquarian  Finn  Magnusson  and  the  celebrated  sculptor  Thor- 
waldsen  regarded  themselves  as  thus  descended  from  Thorfinn 
Karlsefni. 

'■^  Compare  the  alarm  of  the  Wampanoag  Indians  in  1603  at 
the  sight  of  Martin  Pring's  mastiff.  Winaor,  Narr.  and  CrU. 
Hist ,  ill.  174. 


PRE-COL  U  MB  IAN  VO  YA  GES. 


169 


ai 
:!rit. 


great  numbers,  many  Northmen  were  killed,  and 
in  1010  the  survivors  returned  to  Greenland  with 
a  cargo  of  timber  and  peltries.  On  the  way 
thither  the  ships  seem  to  have  separated,  and  one 
of  them,  commanded  by  Bjarni  Grimolfsson,  found 
itself  bored  by  worms  (the  teredo^  and  sank,  with 
its  commander  and  half  the  crew.^ 

Among  Karlsefni's  companions  on  this  mem- 
orable expedition  was  one  Thorvard,  with  his  wife 
Freydis,  a  natural  daughter  of  Eric  the  Red. 
About  the  time  of  their  return  to  Greenland  in 
the  summer  of  1010,  a  ship  arrived  from  Norway, 
commanded  by  two  brothers,  Helgi  and  Finnbogi. 

^  The  fate  of  Bjarni  was  pathetic  and  noble.  It  was  decided 
that  as  many  as  possible  should  save  themselves  in  the  stern  boat. 
' '  Then  Bjarni  ordered  that  the  men  should  go  in  the  boat  by  lot, 
and  not  according  to  rank.  As  it  would  not  hold  all,  they  ac- 
cepted the  saying,  and  when  the  lots  were  drawn,  the  men  went 
out  of  the  ship  into  the  boat.  The  lot  was  that  Bjarni  should 
go  down  from  the  ship  to  the  boat  with  one  half  of  the  men. 
Then  those  to  whom  the  lot  fell  went  down  from  the  ship  to  the 
boat.  'When  they  had  come  into  the  boat,  a  young  Icelander, 
who  was  the  companion  of  Bjarni,  said :  '  Now  thus  do  you  in- 
tend to  leave  me,  Bjarni  ?  '  Bjarni  replied,  '  That  now  seems 
necessary.'  He  replied  with  these  words  :  '  Thou  art  not  true  to 
the  promise  made  when  I  left  my  father's  house  in  Iceland.' 
Bjarni  replied  :  *  In  this  thing  I  do  not  see  any  other  way  ' ;  con- 
tinuing, '  What  course  can  you  suggest  ?  '  He  said  :  '  I  see  this, 
that  we  change  places  and  thou  come  up  here  and  I  go  down 
there.'  Bjarni  replied :  '  Let  it  be  so,  since  I  see  that  you 
are  so  anxious  to  live,  and  are  frightened  by  the  prospect  of 
death.'  Then  they  changed  places,  and  he  descended  into  the 
boat  with  the  men,  and  Bjarni  went  up  into  the  ship.  It  is  re- 
lated that  Bjarni  and  the  sailors  with  him  in  the  ship  perished  in 
the  worm  sea.  Those  who  went  in  the  boat  went  on  their  course 
until  they  came  to  land,  where  they  told  all  these  things."  Dfr 
Costa's  version  from  Saga  Thorfinns  Earlsefnis,  Rafn,  pp.  184'' 
lfi6. 


170 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


During  the  winter  a  new  expedition  was  planned, 
FreydiB,  and  ^^^  ^^  *^®  Slimmer  of  1011  two  ships 
Tn  vfiTiaiid*****  set  sail  for  Vinland,  one  with  Freydis, 
1011-12.  Thorvard,  and  a  crew  of  30  men,  the 

other  with  Helgi  and  Finnbogi,  and  a  crew  of 
35  men.  There  were  also  a  number  of  women. 
The  purpose  was  not  to  found  a  colony  but  to  cut 
timber.  The  brothers  arrived  first  at  Leif's  huts 
and  had  begun  carrying  in  their  provisions  and 
tools,  when  Freydis,  arriving  soon  afterward,  or- 
dered them  off  the  premises.  They  had  no  right, 
she  said,  to  occupy  her  brother's  houses.  So  they 
went  out  and  built  other  huts  for  their  party  a 
little  farther  from  the  shore.  Before  their  business 
was  accomplished  "  winter  set  in,  and  the  brothers 
proposed  to  have  some  games  for  amusement  to 
pass  the  time.  So  it  was  done  for  a  time,  till  dis- 
cord came  among  them,  and  the  games  were  given 
up,  and  none  went  from  one  house  to  the  other ; 
and  things  went  on  so  during  a  great  part  of  the 
winter."  At  length  came  the  catastrophe.  Frey- 
dis one  night  complained  to  her  husband  that  the 
brothers  had  given  her  evil  words  and  struck  her, 
and  insisted  that  he  should  forthwith  avenge  the 
'  affront.  Presently  Thorvard,  unable  to  bear  her 
taunts,  was  aroused  to  a  deed  of  blood.  With  his 
followers  he  made  a  night  attack  upon  the  huts  of 
Helgi  and  Finnbogi,  seized  and  bound  all  the 
occupants,  and  killed  the  men  one  after  another  in 
cold  blood.  Five  women  were  left  whom  Thorvard 
would  have  spared ;  as  none  of  his  men  would 
raise  a  hand  against  them,  Freydis  herself  took  an 
axe  and  brained  them  one  and  all.     In  the  spring 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


171 


of  1012  the  party  sailed  for  Brattahlid  In  the  ship 
of  the  murdered  brothers,  which  was  tlie  larger 
and  better  of  the  two.  Freydis  pretended  that 
they  had  exchanj^ed  ships  and  left  the  other  pai-ty 
in  Vinland.  With  gifts  to  her  men,  and  dire 
threats  for  any  who  should  dare  tell  what  had  been 
done,  she  hoped  to  keep  them  silent.  Words  were 
let  drop,  however,  which  came  to  Leif 's  ears,  and 
led  him  to  arrest  three  of  the  men  and  put  them 
to  the  torture  until  they  told  the  whole  story. 
"  *  I  have  rot  the  heart,'  said  Leif,  '  to  treat  my 
wicked  sister  as  she  deserves  ;  but  this  I  will  fore- 
tell them  [Freydis  and  Thorvard]  that  their  pos- 
terity will  never  thrive.'  So  it  went  that  nobody 
thought  anything  of  them  save  evil  from  that  time." 
With  this  grewsome  tale  ends  all  account  of 
Norse  attempts  at  exploring  or  colonizing  Vinland, 
though  references  to  Vinland  by  no  means  end 
here.^  Taldng  the  narrative  as  a  whole,  it  seems 
to  me  a  sober,  straightforward,  and  eminently  prob- 
able story.     We  may  not  be  able  to  say 

, ,  1  n  I  ,1  1  1      The  whole  sto- 

With  confidence  exactly  where  such  ryisemiueutiy 
places  as  Markland  and  Vinland  were,  "^'^  * 
but  it  is  clear  that  the  coasts  visited  on  these 
southerly  and  southwesterly  voyages  from  Brat- 
tahlid must  have  been  parts  of  the  coast  of  North 
America,  unless  the  whole  story  is  to  be  dismissed 
as  a  figment  of  ^.omebody's  imagination.  But  for 
a  figment  of  the  imagination,  and  of   European 


^  The  stories  of  Qudleif  Gudlaiigsson  and  Ari  Marsson,  with 
the  fanciful  speculations  about  "  Hvitramannaland "  and"  Irland 
it  Mikla,"  do  not  seem  worthy  of  notice  in  this  connection.  They 
may  be  found  in  Da  Costa,  op.  cit.  pp.  159-177 ;  and  see  Reeves, 
The  Finding  of  Wintland  the  Good,  chap.  v. 


■     l«l  t 

:     f'. 


172 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


imagination  withal,  it  has  far  too  many  points  of 
verisimilitude,  as  I  shall  presently  show. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  an  extremely  probable 
story  from  the  time  that  Eric  once  gets  settled  in 
Brattahlid.  The  founding  of  the  Greenland  col- 
ony is  the  only  strange  or  improbable  part  of  the 
narrative,  but  that  is  corroborated  in  so  manv  other 
ways  that  we  know  it  to  be  true  ;  as  already 
observed,  no  fact  in  mediaeval  history  is  better 
established.  When  I  speak  of  the  settlement  of 
Greenland  as  strange,  I  do  not  mean  that  there  is 
anything  strange  in  the  Northmen's  accomplishing 
the  voyage  thither  from  Iceland.  That  island 
is  nearer  to  Greenland  than  to  Norway,  and  we 
know,  moreover,  that  Norse  sailors  achieved  more 
difficult  things  than  penetrating  the  fiords  of 
southern  Greenland.  Upon  the  island  of  Kingi- 
torsook  in  Baffin's  Bay  (72°  55'  N.,  56°  5'  W.) 
near  UpernaTik,  in  a  resrion  supposed  to 

Voyage  into  ^  .   .  "  ^  ^ 

Baffin's  Bay,     havc  bccu  uuvisitcd  bv  man  before  the 

1135. 

modern  age  of  Arctic  exploration,  there 
were  found  in  1824  some  small  artificial  mounds 
with  an  inscription  upon  stone  :  —  "  Erling  Sigh- 
vatson  and  Bjarni  Thordharson  and  Eindrid  Odd- 
son  raised  these  marks  and  cleared  ground  on  Sat- 
urday before  Ascension  Week,  1135.'*  That  is 
to  say,  they  took  symbolic  possession  of  the  land.^ 
In  order  to  appreciate  how  such  daring  voyages 
were  practicable,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  tlio 
Viking  "  ships  "  were  probably  stronger  and  more 
seaworthy,  and  certainly  much  swifter,  than  the 
Spanish   vessels  of  the   time  of   Columbus.     One 

^  Laing,  Heimskringla,  i.  152. 


»■( 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


173 


w 


h- 
1- 


d 


IS 

1 


me 


was  unearthed  a  few  years  ago  at  Sandefiord  in 
Norway,  and  may  be  seen  at  the  museum  ^  yj^.  ^^. 
in  Christiania.  Its  pagan  owner  had  glSord.ln 
been  buried  in  it,  and  his  bones  were  -^o'^^'^y- 
found  amidships,  along  with  the  bones  of  a  dog 
and  a  peacock,  a  few  iron  fish-hooks  and  other 
articles.  Bones  of  horses  and  dogs,  probably 
sacrificed  at  the  funeral  according  to  the  ancient 
Norse  custom,  lay  scattered  about.  This  craft  has 
been  so  well  described  by  Colonel  Higginson,^  that 
I  may  as  well  quote  the  passage  in  fidl :  — 

She  "was  seventy-seven  feet  eleven  inches  at 
the  greatest  length,  and  sixteen  feet  eleven  inches 
at  the  greatest  width,  and  from  the  top  of  the 
keel  to  the  gunwale  amidships  she  was  five  feet 
nine  inches  deep.  She  had  twenty  ribs,  and  would 
draw  less  than  four  feet  of  water.  She  was  clinker- 
built  ;  that  is,  had  plates  slightly  overlapped,  like 
the  shingles  on  the  side  of  a  house.  The  planks 
and  timbers  of  the  frame  were  fastened  together 
with  withes  made  of  roots,  but  the  oaken  boards  of 
the  side  were  united  by  iron  rivets  firmly  clinched. 
The  bow  and  stern  were  similar  in  shape,  and  must 
have  risen  high  out  of  water,  but  were  so  broken 
that  it  was  impossible  to  tell  how  they  originally 
ended.  The  keel  was  deep  and  made  of  Description 
thick  oak  beams,  and  there  was  no  trace  °^  ^^^  *^'^' 
of  any  metallic  sheathing  ;  but  an  iron  anchor  was 
found  almost  rusted  to  pieces.  There  was  no  deck 
and  the  seats  for  rowers  had  been  taken  out.  The 
oars  were  twenty  feet  long,  and  the  oar-holes,  six- 
teen  on  each  side,  had  slits  sloping  towards  the 

^  See  his  Larger  History  of  the  United  States,  pp.  32-34. 


Hi 


174 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


stem  to  allow  the  blades  of  the   oars  to  be  put 
through   from   inside.     The  most   peculiar   thing 
about  the  ship  was  the  rudder,  which  was  on  the 
starboard  or   right  side,  this  side  being  originally 
called  '  steerboard  *  from  this  circumstance.     The 
rudder  was  like  a  large  oar,  with  long  blade  and 
short  handle,  and  was  attached,  not  to  the  side  of 
the  boat,  but  to  the  end  of  a  conical  piece  of  wood 
which  projected  almost  a  foot  from  the  side  of  the 
vessel,  and  almost  two  feet  from  the  stern.     This 
piece  of  wood  was  bored  down  its  length,  and  no 
doubt  a  rope  passing  through  it  secured  the  rudder 
to  the  ship's  side.     It  was  steered  by  a  tiller  at- 
tached to  the  handle,  and  perhaps  also  by  a  rope 
fastened  to  the  blade.     As  a  whole,  this  disinterred 
vessel  proved   to  be  anything  but   the    rude  and 
primitive  craft  which  might  have  been  expected ; 
it  was  neatly  built  and  well  preserved,  constructed 
on  what  a  sailor  would  call  beautiful  lines,  and 
eminently  fitted  for  sea  service.    Many  such  vessels 
may  be  found  depicted  on  the  celebrated  Bayeux 
tapestry  ;  and  the  peculiar  position  of  the  rudder 
explains  the  treaty  mentioned  in  the  Heimskringla, 
giving  to  Norway  aU  lands  lying  west  of  Scotland 
between  which  and   the   mainland  a  vessel   could 
pass  with  her   rudder  shipped.  .  .  .  This  was  not 
one  of  the  very  largest  ships,  for   some  of  them 
had  thirty  oars  on  each  side,  and  vessels  carrying 
from  twenty  to  twenty-five   were   not  uncommon. 
The    largest   of  these   were  called  Dragons,  and 
other   sizes  were   known  as    Serpents  or   Cranes. 
The  ship  itself  was  often  so  built  as  to  lepresent 
the  name  it  bore  :  the  dragon,  for  instance,  was  a 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


175 


}S 


long  low  vessel,  with  the  gilded  head  of  a  dragon 
at  the  bow,  and  the  gilded  tail  at  the  stern  ;  the 
moving  oars  at  the  side  might  represent  the  legs 
of  the  imaginary  creature,  the  row  of  shining  red 
and  white  shields  that  were  hung  over  the  gun- 
wale looked  like  the  monster's  scales,  and  the 
sails  striped  ^vith  red  and  blue  might  suggest  his 
wings.  The  ship  preserved  at  Christiania  is  de- 
scribed as  having  had  but  a  single  mast,  set  into 
a  block  of  wood  so  large  that  it  is  said  no  such 
block  could  now  be  cut  in  Norway.  Probably  the 
sail  was  much  like  those  still  carried  by  large  open 
boats  in  that  country,  —  a  single  square  on  a  mast 
forty  feet  long.^  These  masts  have  no  standing 
rigging,  and  are  taken  down  when  not  in  use ;  and 
this  was  probably  the  practice  of  the  Vikings." 

In  such  vessels,  well  stocked  with  food  and 
weapons,  the  Northmen  were  accustomed  to  spend 
many  weelis  together  on  the  sea,  now  and  then 
touching  land.  In  such  vessels  they  made  their 
way  to  Algiers  and  Constantinople,  to  the  White 
Sea,  to  Baffin's  Bay.  It  is  not,  therefore,  their 
voyage  to  Greenland  that  seems  strange,  but  it 
is  their  success  in  founding  a  colony  which  could 
last  for  more  than  four  centuries  in  that  in- 
hospitable climate.  The  question  is  sometimes 
asked  whether  the  climate  of  Greenland 
may  not  have  undergone  some  change 
within  the  last  thousand  years.^     If  there  has  been 


The  climate  of 
Greenland. 


1  Perhaps  it  may  have  been  a  square-headed  lug-,  like  those  of 
the  Deal  palley-pnnts ;  see  Leslie's  Old  Sea  Wings,  Ways,  and 
Words,  in  the  Days  of  Oak  and  Hemp,  London,  18'.)(),  p.  2L 

^  Some  people  must  have  queer  notions  about  the  lapse  of  put 


m 


176 


THE  DISCOVERT  OF  AMERICA. 


any  change,  it  must  have  been  very  slight ;  such 
as,  perhaps,  a  small  variation  in  the  flow  of  ocean 
currents  might  occasion.  I  am  inclined  to  be- 
lieve that  there  may  have  been  such  a  change, 
from  the  testimony  of  Ivar  Bardsen,  steward  of 
the  Gardar  bishopric  in  the  latter  half  of  the  four- 
teenth centuiy,  or  about  haKway  between  the  time 
of  Eric  the  Red  and  our  own  time.  According  to 
Bardsen  there  had  long  been  a  downward  drifting 
of  ice  from  the  north  and  a  consequent  accumula- 
tion of  bergs  and  floes  upon  the  eastern  coast  of 
Greenland,  insomuch  that  the  customary  route 
formerly  followed  by  ships  coming  from  Iceland 
was  no  longer  safe,  and  a  more  southerly  route 
had  been  generally  adopted.^  This  slow  southward 
extension  of  the  polar  ice-sheet  upon  the  east  of 
Greenland  seems  still  to  be  going  on  at  the  present 
day .2  It  is  therefore  not  at  aU  improbable,  but  on 
the  contrary  quite  probable,  that  a  thou«iand  years 
ago  the  mean  annual  temperature  of  the  tip  end  of 
Greenland,  at  Cape  Farewell,  was  a  few  degrees 

time.  I  have  more  than  once  haJ  this  question  put  to  me  in  such 
a  way  da  to  show  that  what  the  querist  really  had  in  mind  was 
some  vague  impression  of  the  time  when  oaks  and  chestnuts,  vines 
and  magnolias,  grew  luxuriantly  over  a  great  part  of  Greenland  I 
But  that  was  in  the  Miocene  period,  probably  not  less  than  £, 
million  years  ago,  and  has  no  obvious  bearing  upon  the  deeds  of 
Ei'ic  the  Ked. 

'  Bardsen,  Descriptio  Grcenlandice,  appended  to  Major's  Voyages 
of  the.  Venetian  Brothers,  etc,  pp.  40,  41  ;  and  see  below,  p.  242. 

'^  Zahrtmann,  Journal  of  Royal  Geogi-aphical  Society,  London, 
1S30,  vol.  V.  p.  102.  On  this  general  subject  see  J.  D.  Whitney, 
"  The  Climate  Changes  of  Later  Geological  Times,"  in  Memoirs 
of  the  Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology  at  Harvard  College,  Cam- 
bridge, 18S2,  vol.  vii.  According  to  Professor  Whitney  there  hatl 
also  been  a  deterioration  in  the  climate  of  Iceland. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


17T 


higher  than  now.^  But  a  slight  difference  of  this 
sort  might  have  an  important  bearing  upon  the 
fortunes  of  a  colony  planted  there.  For  example, 
it  would  directly  affect  the  extent  of  the  hay  crop. 
Grass  grows  very  well  now  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Julianeshaab.  In  summer  it  is  still  a  "green 
land,"  with  good  pasturage  for  cattle,  but  there  is 
difficulty  in  getting  hay  enough  to  last  through  the 
nine  months  of  winter.  In  1855  "  there  were  in 
Greenland  30  to  40  head  of  horned  cattle,  about 
100  goats,  and  20  sheep  ;  "  but  in  the  ancient  col- 
ony, with-  a  population  not  exceeding  6,000  per- 
sons, "  herds  of  cattle  were  kept  which  even  yielded 
produce  for  exportation  to  Europe."  ^  So  strong 
a  contrast  seems  to  indicate  a  much  more  plentifid 
grass  crop  than  to-day,  although  some  hay  might 
perhaps  have  been  imported  from  Iceland  in  ex- 
change for  Greenland  exports,  which  were  chiefly 
whale  oil,  eider-down,  and  skins  of  seals,  foxes, 
and  white  bears. 

When  once  the  Northmen  had  found  their  way 
to  Cape  Farewell,  it  would  have  been  marvellous 
if  such  active  sailors  could  long  have  avoided 
stimibling  upon  the  continent  of  North  America. 
Without  compass  or  astrolabe  these  daring  men 
were  accustomed  to  traverse  long  stretches  of  open 

^  One  must  not  too  hastily  infer  that  the  mean  temperature  of 
points  on  the  American  coast  south  of  Davis  strait  would  be 
affected  in  the  same  way.  The  relation  between  the  phenomena 
is  not  quite  so  simple.  For  example,  a  warm  early  spring  on  the 
coast  of  Greenland  increases  the  discharge  of  icebergs  from  its 
fiords  to  wander  down  the  Atlantic  ocean  ;  and  this  increase  of 
floating  ice  tends  to  chilL  and  dampen  the  summers  at  least  as  faf 
south  as  Long  Island,  if  not  farther. 

^  Rink's  Danish  Greenland,  pp.  27,  96,  97. 


178 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


With  the 
Northmen 
once  in  Green- 
land, the  dis- 
covery of  '  .e 
Americt, 
continent  was 
almost  inev- 
itable. 


sea,  trusting  to  the  stars ;  and  it  needed  only 
a  stiff  northeasterly  breeze,  with  per- 
sistent clouds  and  fog,  to  land  a  west- 
ward bound  "  dragon  "  anywhere  from 
Cape  Race  to  Cape  Cod.  This  is  what 
appears  to  have  happened  to  Bjarni 
Herjulfsson  in  986,  and  something  quite 
like  it  happened  to  Henry  Hudson  in  1609.^  Cu- 
riosity is  a  motive  quite  sufficient  to  explain 
Leif's  making  the  easy  summer  voyage  to  find  out 
what  sort  of  country  Bjarni  had  seen.  He  found 
it  thickly  wooded,  and  as  there  was  a  dearth  of 
good  timber  both  in  Greenland  and  in  Iceland,  it 
would  naturally  occur  to  Leif's  friends  that  voy- 
ages for  timber,  to  be  used  at  home  and  also  to  be 
exported  to  Iceland,  might  turn  out  to  be  profit- 
Voyages  for  able.2  As  Laing  says,  "  to  go  in  quest 
timber.  ^£  ^j^^  woodcd  couutrics  to  the  south- 

west, from  whence  drift\N'^ood  came  to  their  shores, 
was  a  reasonable,  intelligible  motive  for  making  a 
voyage  in  search  of  the  lands  from  whence  it  came, 
and  where  this  valuable  material  could  be  got  for 
notliing."  ^ 

If  now  we  look  at  the  details  of  the  story  we 
shall  find  many  ear-marks  of  truth  in  it.  We 
must  not  look  for  absolute  accuracy  in  a  narra- 
tive which  —  as  we  have  it  —  is  not  the  work  of 

^  See  Read's  Historical  Inquiry  concf.ning  Henry  Hudson,  Al- 
bany, 1866,  p.  160. 

'^  "  Nd  tekst  umrsedha  at  n^ju  um  Vfnlandsferdh,  thviat  sd 
ferdh  tliikir  baBdhi  g(5dh  til  fjdr  ok  virdhlng'ar, "  i.  e.  "Now  they 
bepan  to  talk  again  about  a  voyage  to  Vinland,  for  the  voyage 
thither  was  both  gainful  and  honourable."     Rafn,  p.  66. 

*  Heimskringla,  i.  168. 


[life. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


179 


Leif  or  Thorfinn  or  any  of  their  comrades,  but 
of  compilers  or  copyists,  honest  and  careful  as  it 
seems  to  me,  but  liable  to  misplace  details  and  to 
call  by  wrong  names  things  which  they  had  never 
seen.  Starting  with  these  modest  expectations  we 
shall  find  the  points  of  verisimilitude 

mi        •  •  J.1    J.1       1        a.     •         Ear-marks  of 

munerous.     io  begin  with  the  least  sig-  truth  in  the 

•  /}  ,  1  J.1  i     narrative. 

nincant,  somewhere  on  our  northeast- 
ern coast  the  voyagers  found  many  foxes.^  These 
animals,  to  be  sure,  are  found  in  a  great  many  coun- 
tries, but  the  point  for  us  is  that  in  a  southerly  and 
southwesterly  course  from  Cape  Farewell  these 
sailors  are  said  to  have  found  them.  If  our  narra- 
tors had  been  drawing  upon  their  imaginations  or 
dealing  with  semi-mythical  materials,  they  would  as 
likely  as  not  have  lugged  into  the  story  elephants 
from  Africa  or  hippogriffs  from  Dreamland  ;  medi- 
aeval writers  were  blissfully  ignorant  of  aU  canons 
of  probability  in  such  matters.^  But  our  narrators 
simply  mention  an  animal  which  has  for  ages 
abomided  on  our  northeastern  coasts.  One  such 
instance  is  enough  to  suggest  that  they  were  fol- 
lowing reports  or  documents  which  emanated  ulti- 
mately from  eye-witnesses  and  told  the  plain  truth. 
A  dozen  such  instances,  if  not  neutralized  by 
counter-instances,  are  enough  to  make  this  view 
extremely  probable ;  and  then  one  or  two  instances 

^  "  Fjoldi  var  thar  melrakka,"  i.  e.  "ibi  vulplum  magnus 
numerus  erat,"  Rafn,  p.  138. 

-  It  is  extremely  difficult  for  an  impostor  to  concoct  a  ngrra. 
tive  without  making  blunders  that  can  easily  be  detected  by  a 
critical  scholar.  For  example,  the  Book  of  Mormon,  in  the  pas- 
sage cited  ^'^ee  above,  p.  •^),  in  supremely  blissful  ignorance  intro- 
duces oxen  Iieep,  and  silk-worms,  as  well  as  the  knowledge  o£ 
smelting  i    >u,  into  pre-Columbian  America.* 


180 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


which  could  not  have  originated  in  the  imagination 
of  a  European  writer  will  suffice  to  prove  it. 

Let  us  observe,  then,  that  on  coming  to  Mark- 
land  they  "  slew  a  bear  ;  "  ^  the  river  and  lake 
(or  bay)  in  Vinland  abounded  with  salmon  bigger 
than  Leif's  people  had  ever  seen;^  on  the  coast 
they  caught  halibut ;  ^  they  came  to  an  island 
where  there  were  so  many  eider  ducks  breeding 
that  they  could  hardly  avoid  treading  on  their 
eggs  ;  ^  and,  as  already  observed,  it  was  because 
of  the  abundance  of  wild  grapes  that  Leif  named 
the  southernmost  country  he  visited  Vinland. 

^  "Thar  i  drdpu  their  einn  bjtirn,"  i.  e.  "in  qua  ursura  inter- 
fecerunt,"  id.  p.  138. 

2  "  Hvorki  skorti  thar  lax  f  dnni  n6  i  yatninu,  ok  stserra  lax 
enn  their  hefdhi  fyrr  sfedh,"  i.  e.  "  ibi  iieque  in  fluvio  neque  in 
lacu  deerat  salnionam  copia,  et  quidem  majoris  corporis  quani 
antea  vidissent,"  id.  p.  32. 

^  ■'  Helgir  flskar,"  i.  e.  "sacri  pisces,"  id.  p.  148.  The  Dan- 
ish phrase  is  "  helleflyndre,"  i.  e.  "  holy  flounder."  The  Eng- 
lish halibut  is  hali  =  holy  -\-  but  =  flounder.  This  word  but  is 
classed  as  Middle  English,  but  may  still  be  heard  in  the  north  of 
England.  The  fish  may  have  been  so  called  "  from  being  eaten 
particularly  on  holy  days  "  {Century  Diet.  s.  v.) ;  or  possibly  from  a 
pagan  superstition  that  water  abounding  in  flat  fishes  is  especially 
safe  for  mariners  (Pliny,  Hist.  Nat.  ix.  70)  ;  or  possibly  from  some 
lost  folk-tale  about  St.  Peter  (Maurer,  Isliindische  Volkssagen 
der  Gegenwart,  Leipsic,  ]8()0,  p.  li)5). 

*  "  Sva  var  nitirg  ledhr  i  eynni,  at  varla  mdtti  gdnga  fyri  egg- 
jum,"  i.  e.  "tantus  in  insula  anatum  moUissimarum  numerus 
erat,  ut  prse  ovis  transiri  fere  non  posset,"  id.  p.  141.  Eider  ducks 
breed  on  our  northeastern  coiists  as  far  south  as  Portland,  and  are 
sometimes  in  winter  seen  as  far  south  as  Delaware.  They  also 
abound  in  Greenland  and  Iceland,  and,  as  Wilson  observes,  "  their 
nesfs  are  crowded  so  close  together  that  a  person  can  scarcely 
walk  without  treading  on  them.  .  .  .  The  Icelanders  have  for 
ages  known  the  value  of  eider  down,  and  have  done  an  extensive 
business  in  it."  See  Wilson's  Arnerican  Ornithology,  vol.  iiL 
p.  50.  ^ 


. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


181 


From  the  profusion  of  grapes  —  such  that  the 
ship's  stern  boat  is  said  on  one  occasion  to  have 
been  filled  with  them  ^  —  we  get  a  clue,  though  less 
decisive  than  could  be  wished,  to  the  location  of 
Vinland.     The  extreme  northern  limit 

<•-  •         '/"I  t      '      Ann      ^  i      Northern 

of  the  vme  in  Canada  is  47  \,  the  paral-  iiu.it  of  the 
lei  which  cuts  across  the  tops  of  Prince 
Edward  and  Cape  Breton  islands  on  the  map.'^ 
Near  this  northern  limit,  however,  wild  grapes  are 
by  no  means  plenty  ;  so  that  the  coast  upon  which 
Leif  wintered  must  apparently  have  been  south  of 
Cape  Breton.  Dr.  Storm,  who  holds  that  Vinland 
was  on  the  southern  coast  of  Nova  Scotia,  has 
collected  some  interesting  testimony  as  to  the 
gi'owth  of  wild  gi-apes  in  that  region,  but  on  the 
whole  the  abundance  of  this  fruit  seems  rather  to 
point  to  the  shores  of  Massachusetts  Bay.^ 

We  may  now  observe  tlia^,  wliile  it  is  idle  to 
attempt  to  determine  accurately  the  length  of  the 
winter  day,  as  given  in  our  chronicles,  Length  of  th« 
nevertheless  since  that  length  attracted  *'°'^^'^  *^' 
the  attention   of   the  voyagers,  as   something  re- 


^    {  "SvS    er   sagt  at   eptirbdtr    tlieir'-a   var  fylldr  af    \in- 
(     So    it-is-said  that  afterboat     their    was  filled    of  vine- 

^«^J"™-"}Rafn,p.  36. 

berries.     ' 

« 

^  Storm,  "Studies  on  the  Vinland  Voyages,"  Mhnoires  de  la 
sncitU  royale  de/t  antiquaires  du  Nord,  Copenhagen,  1888,  p.  o.jI. 
The  limit  of  the  vine  at  this  latitude  is  some  distance  inland;  near 
the  shore  the  limit  is  a  little  farther  south,  and  in  Newfoundland 
it  does  not  grow  at  all.     Id.  p.  o(>8. 

^  The  attempt  of  Dr.  Kohl  {Maine  Hist.  Soc,  New  Series,  vol. 
i.)  to  connect  the  voyage  of  Thorfinn  with  the  coast  of  Maine 
Beems  to  be  successfully  refuted  by  De  Costa,  Northmen  in  Maine, 
etc.,  Albany,  1870. 


182 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


l! 


I 


markable,  it  may  fairly  be  supposed  to  indicate  a 
latitude  lower  than  they  were  accustomed  to  reach 
in  their  trading  voyages  in  Europe.  Such  a  lati- 
tude as  that  of  Dublin,  which  lies  opposite  Labra- 
dor, would  have  presented  no  novelty  to  them,  for 
voyages  of  Icelander*  to  their  kinsmen  in  Dub- 
lin, and  in  Rouen  as  well,  were  common  enough. 
Halifax  lies  about  opposite  Bordeaux,  and  Boston 
a  little  south  of  opposite  Cape  Finisterre,  in  Spain, 
so  that  either  of  these  latitudes  would  satisfy  the 
conditions  of  the  case  ;  either  woiJd  show  a  longer 
winter  day  than  Rouen,  which  was  about  the  south- 
ern limit  of  ordinary  trading  voyages  from  Ice- 
land. At  all  events,  the  length  of  day  indicates 
for  Vinland  a  latitude  south  of  Cape  Breton. 

The  next  point  to  be  observed  is  the  mention  of 
"  self-sown  wheat-fields."  ^  This  is  not  only  an 
important  ear-mark  of  truth  in  the  narrative,  but 
it  helps  us  somewhat  further  in  determining  the 
position  of  Vinland.  The  "  self-sown  "  cereal, 
which  these  Icelanders  called  "  wheat,"  was  in  aU 
probability  what  the  English  settlers  six  hundred 
years  afterward  called  "corn,"  in  each 
case  applying  to  a  new  and  nameless 
thing  the  most  serviceable  name  at  hand.  In 
England  "  corn  "  means  either  wheat,  barley,  rye, 
and  oats  collectively,  or  more  specifically  wheat ; 
in  Scotland  it  generally  means  oats ;  in  America  it 
means  maize,  the  "  Indian  corn,"  the  cereal  pecul- 
iar to  the  western  hemisphere.  The  beautiful  wav- 
ing plant,  with  its  exquisitely  tasselled  ears,  which 

»    (  "Sjillfadna  hveitiakra"  I  j^^^^       ^^^^ 
t    Self-aown  -wheat-acres    J 


Indian  corn. 


X 


\ 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


183 


was  one  of  the  first  things  to  attract  Champlain's 
attention,  could  not  have  escaped  the  notice  of 
such  keen  observers  as  we  are  beginning  to  find 
Leif  and  Thorfinn  to  have  been.  A  cereal  like 
this,  requiring  so  little  cultivation  that  without 
much  latitude  of  speech  it  might  be  described  as 
growing  wild,  would  be  interesting  to  Europeans 
visiting  the  American  coast ;  but  it  would  hardly 
occur  to  European  fancy  to  invent  such  a  thing. 
The  mention  of  it  is  therefore  a  very  significant 
ear-mark  of  the  truth  of  the  narrative.  As  re- 
gards the  position  of  Vinland,  the  presence  of 
maize  seems  to  indicate  a  somewhat  lower  lati- 
tude than  Nova  Scotia.  Maize  requires  intensely 
hot  summers,  and  even  under  the  most  careful 
European  cultivation  does  not  flourish  north  of 
the  Alps.  In  the  sixteenth  century  its  northern- 
most limit  on  the  American  coast  seems  to  have 
been  at  the  mouth. of  the  Kennebec  (44°),  though 
farther  inland  it  was  found  by  Cartier  at  Hoche- 
laga,  on  the  site  of  Montreal  (45°  30').  A  pre- 
sumption is  thus  raised  in  favour  of  the  opinion 
that  Vinland  was  not  farther  north  than  Massa- 
chusetts Bay.^ 

This  presumption  is  supported  by  what  is  said 
about  the  climate  of  Vinland,  though  it  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  general  statements  about  cli- 
mate are  apt  to  be  very  loose  and  misleading.    We 

1  Dr.  Storm  makes  perhaps  too  much  of  this  presumption.  He 
treats  it  as  decisive  against  his  own  opinion  that  Vinland  was  the 
southern  coast  of  Nova  Scotia,  and  accordingly  he  tries  to  prove 
that  the  self-sown  com  was  not  maize,  but  "  wild  rice  "  {Zizania 
aquatica).  M^moires,  etc.,  p.  356.  But  his  argument  is  weakened 
by  excess  of  ingenuity. 


I 


184 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


are  told  that  it  seemed  to  Leif's  people  that  cattle 
would  be  able  to  pass  the  winter  out  of  doors  there, 

for  there  was  no  frost  and  the  grass  was 
weather  in       not    much   withered.^      On   the    other 

hand,  Thorfinn's  people  found  the  win- 
ter severe,  and  suffered  from  cold  and  hunger.^ 
Taken  in  connection  with  each  other,  these  two 
statements  would  apply  very  well  to-tlay  to  our 
variable  winters  on  the  coast  southward  from  Cape 
Ann.  The  winter  of  1889-90  in  Cambridge,  for 
example,  might  very  naturally  have  been  described 
by  visitors  from  higher  latitudes  as  a  winter  with- 
out frost  and  with  grass  scarcely  withered.  In- 
deed, we  might  have  described  it  so  ourselves. 
On  Narragansett  and  Buzzard's  bays  such  soft 
winter  weather  is  still  more  common  ;  north  of 
Cape  Ann  it  is  much  less  common.  The  severe 
winter  (magna  hiemH)  is  of  course  familiar  enough 
anywhere  along  the  northeastern  coast  of  America. 
On  the  whole,  we  may  say  with  some  confidence 

that  the  place  described  by  our  chroni- 

Probable  Bitu-      ,  -ir-    i        i  -j       ^     i  i 

ation  of  viu-    clcrs  as  V  mland  was  situated  somewhere 
between  Point  Judith   and  Cape  Bre- 
ton ;  possibly  we  may  narrow  our  limits  and  say 

^  "  Thar  var  svS  g6dhr  landskostr  at  thvi  er  theira  s;^dist,  at 
thar  raundi  eingi  ffenadhr  f6dhr  thurf a  d  vetrum ;  thar  kvomu 
eingi  frost  A  vetrum,  ok  Htt  r^uudhu  thargros,"  i.  e.  "  tanta  autetn 
erat  terras  bonitas,  ut  inde  intelligere  asset,  pecora  hieme  pabiUo 
non  indigere  posse,  niillis  incidentibus  algoribtis  hiemalibus,  et 
graminibus  parum  flacceaeentibus."     Rafn,  p.  32. 

'■^  "  Thar  voni  their  um  vetrinn;  ok  gjordhist  vetr  mikill,  en 
ekki  fyri  unnit  ok  gjordhist  lilt  til  matarins,  ok  tdknst  af  vei- 
dhirnar,"  i.  e.  "  hichiemarunt ;  cum  vero  magna  incideret  hiems, 
nullumque  provisum  essetalimentum,  cibua  coepit  deficere  captu' 
raque  oessabat."    Id.  p.  174. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


185 


that  it  was  aomowhere  between  Cape  Cod  and 
Cape  Ann.  But  the  latter  conchision  is  much  less 
secure  than  the  former.  In  such  a  case  as  this, 
the  more  we  narrow  our  limits  the  greater  our 
liability  to  error.^  While  by  such  narrowing, 
moreover,  the  question  may  acquire .  more  interest 
as  a  bone  of  contention  among  local  anticpiarians, 
its  value  for  the  general  historian  is  not  increased. 
But  we  have  not  yet  done  with  the  points  of  veri- 
similitude in  our  story.  We  have  now  to  cite  two 
or  three  details  that  are  far  more  striking  than  any 
as  yet  mentioned,  —  details  that  could  never  have 
been  conjured  up  by  the  fancy  of  any  mediaeval 
European.  We  nmst  bear  in  mind  that  "  sav- 
ages," whether  true  savages  or  people  in  ..  gavaRes  " 
the  lower  status  of  barbarism,  were  prac-  i;;ea"i.vtti  *** 
tically  unknown  to  Europeans  before  ^"■""i**""- 
the  fifteenth  century.  There  ^\ere  no  such  people 
in  Europe  or  in  any  part  of  Asia  or  Africa  visited 
by  Europeans  before  the  great  voyages  of  the 
Portuguese.  Mediaeval  Europeans  knew  lothing 
whatever  about  people  who  would  show  surprise  at 
the  sight  of  an  iron  tool  ^  or  frantic  terror  at  the 

*  A  favourite  method  of  determining  the  exact  spots  visited  by 
the  Nortlimen  has  been  to  compare  their  statements  regarding 
the  shape  and  trend  of  the  coasts,  their  bays,  headlands,  etc., 
witlx  various  well-known  points  on  the  New  England  coast.  It  is 
a  tempting  method,  but  unfortunately  treacherous,  because  the 
same  general  description  will  often  apply  well  enough  to  several 
different  places.  It  is  like  summer  boarders  in  the  country  strug- 
gling to  tell  one  another  where  they  have  been  to  drive,  —  past  a 
school-house,  down  a  steep  hill,  through  some  woods,  and  by  a 
saw-mill,  etc. 

^  It  is  not  meant  that  stone  implements  did  not  continue  to  be 
used  in  some  parts  of  Europe  far  into  the  Middle  Ages.    But 


186 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


voice  of  a  bull,  or  who  would  eagerly  i  rade  off 
valuable  property  for  worthless  trinkets.  Their 
imagination  might  be  up  to  inventing  hobgoblins 
and  people  with  heads  under  their  shoulders,^  but 
it  was  not  up  to  inventing  such  simple  touches  of 
nature  as  these.  Bearing  this  in  mind,  let  us 
observe  that  Thorfiim  found  the  natives  of  Vin 
land  eager  to  give  valuable  furs  ^  in  exchange  foj 

this  was  not  because  iron  v<z^  not  perfectly  -well  known,  but  be 
cause  in  many  backward  regions  it  was  difficult  to  obtain  or  tG 
work,  so  that  stone  continued  in  use.  As  my  friend,  Mr.  T.  S. 
Perry,  reminds  me,  Helbig  says  that  stone-pointed  spears  were 
used  by  some  of  the  English  at  the  battle  of  Plastings,  and  stone 
battle-axes  by  some  of  the  Scots  under  William  Wallace  at  the 
end  of  the  thirteenth  century.  Die  Italiker  in  der  Poebene,  Leip- 
sic,  1879,  p.  42.  Helbig' s  statement  as  to  Hastings  is  confirmed 
by  Freeman,  Norman  Conquest  of  England,  vol.  iii.  p.  473. 

^  My  use  of  the  word  "  inventing  "  is,  in  this  connection,  a  slip 
of  the  pen.  Of  course  the  tales  of  "  men  whose  heads  do  grow 
beneath  their  shoulders,"  the  Sciopedse,  etc.,  as  told  by  Sir  John 
Mandeville,  were  not  invented  by  the  mediaeval  imagination,  but 
copied  from  ancient  authors.  They  may  be  found  in  Pl'ny,  Hist, 
Nat.,  lib.  vii.,  and  were  mentioned  before  his  time  by  Ktesias,  as 
well  as  by  Hecatasus,  according  to  Stephanus  of  Byzantium.  Cf . 
Aristophanes,  Aves,  1553  ;  Julius  Solinus,  Polyhistor,  ed.  Salmar 
sius,  cap.  240.  Just  as  these  sheets  are  going  to  press  there  comes 
to  me  Mr.  Perry's  acute  and  learned  History  of  Greek  Literature, 
New  York,  1890,  in  which  this  subject  is  mentioned  in  connec- 
tion with  the  mendacious  and  medical  Ktesias :  —  These  stories 
\ave  probably  acquired  a  literary  currency  "  by  exercise  of  the 
habit,  not  imknown  even  to  students  of  science,  of  indiscriminate 
copying  from  one's  predecessors,  so  that  in  reading  Mandevill^ 
we  have  the  ghosts  of  the  lies  of  Ktesias,  almost  sanctified  by 
the  authority  of  Pliny,  who  quoted  them  and  thereby  made 
them  a  part  of  medifeval  folk-lore  —  and  from  folk-lore,  proba- 
bly,  they  took  their  remote  start  "  (p.  522). 

2  "  En  that  var  grdvara  ok  safvali  ok  allskonar  skinnaTara" 
(Rafn,  p.  59),  —  i.  e.  gray  fur  and  sable  and  all  sorts  oi'  skin- 
wares;  in  another  account,  "skinnavoru  ok  algrd  skinn,"  which 
is  the  Danish  version  is  "  skindvarer  og  segte  graaskind"  (id. 


■11 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


187 


Kttle  strips  of  scarlet  cloth  to  bind  about  their 
heads.  When  the  Northmen  found  the  cloth  grow- 
ing scarce  they  cut  it  into  extremely  narrow  strips, 
but  the  desire  of  the  natives  was  so  great  that 
they  would  still  give  a  whole  skin  for  the  smallest 
strip.  They  wanted  also  to  buy  weap-  -phe  natives  n 
ons,  but  Thorfinn  forbade  his  men  to  Finland. 
sell  them.  One  of  the  natives  picked  up  v^\ 
iron  hatchet  and  cut  wood  with  it ;  one  after  an- 
other tried  and  admired  it ;  at  length  one  tried  it 
on  a  stone  and  broke  its  edge,  and  then  they  scorn- 
fully threw  it  down.^  One  day  while  they  were 
trading,  Thorfinn's  bull  ran  out  before  them  and 
bellowed,  whereupon  the  whole  company  was  in- 
stantly scattered  in  headlong  flight.  After  tliis, 
when  threatened  with  an  attack  by  the  natives, 
Thorfinn  drew  up  his  men  for  a  fight  and  put  the 
bull  in  front,  very  much  as  Pyrrhus  used  elephants 
—  at  first  with  success  —  to  frighten  the  Romans 
and  their  horses.^ 


In- 
ch 
Id. 


p.  150),  —  i.  e.  skinwares  and  genuine  gray  f  ura.  Cartier  in  Can- 
ada and  the  Puritans  in  Massachusetts  were  not  long  in  finding 
that  the  natives  had  good  furs  to  sell. 

1  Rafn,  p.  156. 

2  Much  curious  information  respecting  the  use  of  elephants  in 
•war  may  be  found  in  the  learned  work  of  the  Chevalier  Armandi, 
Histoire  militaire  des  dfphants,  Paris,  1843.  As  regards  Thor- 
finn's bull,  ^Tr.  Laing  makes  the  kind  of  blunder  tliat  our  Brit- 
ish cousins  are  sometimes  known  to  make  when  they  get  the 
Rocky  Mountains  within  sight  of  Bunker  Hill  monument.  "  A 
continental  people  in  tliat  part  of  America,"  says  Mr.  Laing, 
"  could  not  be  strangers  to  the  much  more  formidable  bison." 
Heimskringla,  p.  109.  Bisons  on  the  Atlantic  coast,  Mr.  Laing  ?  I 
And  then  his  coniparison  quite  misses  the  point ;  a  bison,  if  tlie 
natives  had  been  familiar  with  him,  would  not  liave  been  at  all 
formidable  aa  compared  to  the  bull  whicli  they  had  never  before 


188 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


'jIv.  b 


Meaninf;  of 
the  epithet 
"  Skraelings." 


These  incidents  are  of  surpassing  interest,  for 
they  were  attendant  upon  the  first  meeting  (in  all 
probability)  that  ever  took  place  between  civilized 
Europeans  and  any  people  below  the  upper  status 
of  barbarism.^  Who  were  these  natives  encoun- 
tered by  Thorfinn?  The  Northmen  called  them 
"  Skraelings,"  a  name  which  one  is  at  first  sight 
strongly  tempted  to  derive  from  the  Icelandic  verb 
skraikja,  identical  with  the  English  screech.  A 
crowd  of  excited  Indians  might  most  appropri- 
ately be  termed  Screechers.^  This  derivation, 
however,  is  not  correct.  The  word  skrcelincf  sur- 
vives  in  modern  Norwegian,  and  means  a  feeble 
or  puny  or  insignificant  person.  Dr. 
Storm's  suggestion  is  in  all  probability 
correct,  that  the  name  "  Skraelings,"  as 
applied  to  the  natives  of  America,  had  no  ethno- 
logical significance,  but  simply  meant  "  inferior 
people ;  "  it  gave  concise  expression  to  thr  white 
man's  opinion  that  they  were  "a  bad  lot."  In 
Icelandic  literature  the  name  is  usually  applied  to 
the  Eskimos,  and  hence  it  has  been  rashly  inferred 
that  Thorfinn  found  Eskimos  in  Vinland.  Such 
was  Rafn's  opinion,  and  since  his   time  the  com- 

seen.  A  horae  is  much  less  formidable  than  a  cougar,  but  Aztec 
warriors  who  did  not  mind  a  cougar  were  paralyzed  with  terror  at 
the  sight  of  men  on  horseback.  It  is  the  unknown  that  frightens 
in  such  cases.  Thorfinn's  natives  were  probably  familiar  with 
Bucb  large  animals  as  moose  and  deer,  but  a  deer  is  n't  a  bull. 

^  The  Phoenicians,  however  (who  in  this  connection  may  be 
clpssedwith  Europeans),  must  have  met  with  some  such  people  in 
the  course  of  their  voyages  upon  the  coasts  of  Africa.  I  shall 
treat  of  this  more  fully  below,  p.  327. 

-  As  for  Indians,  says  Cieza  de  Leon,  they  are  all  noisy  (alhara- 
fluientos).     Scgunda  Parte  de  la  Crdnica  del  Peru,  cap.  xxiii. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


189 


mentators  have  gone  off  upon  a  wrong  trail  and 
much  ingenuity  has  been  wasted.^  It  woiUd  be 
well  to  remember,  however,  that  the  Europeans  of 
the  eleventh  century  were  not  ethnologists  ;  in 
meeting  these  inferior  peoples  for  the  first  time  they 
were  more  likely  to  be  impressed  with  the  broad 
fact  of  their  inferiority  than  to  be  nice  in  making 
distinctions.  When  we  call  both  Australians  and 
Fuegians  "  savages,"  we  do  not  assert  identity  or 
relationship  between  them;  and  so  when  the 
Northmen  called  Eskimos  and  Indians  by  the 
same  disparaging  epithet,  they  doubtless  simply 
meant  to  call  them  savages. 

Our  chronicle  describes  the  Skraelings  of  Vin- 
land  as  swarthy  in  hue,  ferocious  in  aspect,  with 
ugly  hair,  big  eyes,  and  broad  cheeks.^  This  will 
do  very  well  for  Indians,  except  as  to 

1  -ixr  -t  1  •    1      Personal 

the  eyes.      We  are  accustomed  to  think  appearance  of 
of   Indian  eyes  as  small ;   but   in  this 
connection  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  a  very  keen 


^  For  example,  Dr.  De  Costa  refers  to  Dr.  Abbott's  discoveries 
as  indicating' ' '  that  the  Indian  was  preceded  by  a  people  like  the 
Eskimos,  whose  stone  implements  are  found  in  the  Trenton 
gravel."  Pre-Columbian  Discovery,  p.  1.^2.  Quite  so ;  but  that 
was  in  the  Glacial  Period  (!  !),and  when  the  edge  of  the  ice-sheet 
slowly  retreated  northward,  the  Eskimo,  who  is  emphatically  an 
Arctic  creature,  doubtless  retreated  with  it,  just  as  he  retreated 
from  Europe.  See  above,  p.  18.  There  is  not  the  slightest  rea- 
son for  supposing  that  there  were  any  Eskimos  south  of  Labrador 
so  lately  as  nine  hundred  years  ago. 

"^  "  Tlieir  voru  svartir  menu  ok  illiligir,  ok  havdhu  flit  h^  6, 
hofdhi.  Their  voru  mjok  eygdhir  ok  breidhir  {  kinnum,"  i.  e. 
"  Hi  homines  erant  nigri,  truculenti  specie,  foedam  in  capite 
comam  habentes,  oculis  magnis  et  gems  latis."  Rafn,  p.  149.  The 
Icelandic  svartr  is  more  precisely  rendered  by  the  identical  Eng- 
lish swarthy  than  by  tlie  Latin  niger. 


■M  i 


190 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


observer,  Marc  Lesoarbot,  in  his  minute  and  elab- 
orate description  of  the  physical  appearance  of  the 
Micmacs  of  Acadia,  speaks  with  some  emphasis  of 
their  large  eyes.^  Dr.  Storm  quite  reasonably 
suggests  that  the  Norse  expression  may  refer  to 
the  size  not  of  the  eye-ball,  but  of  the  eye-socket, 
which  in  the  Indian  face  is  apt  to  be  large ;  and 
very  likely  this  is  what  the  Frenchman  also  had 
in  mind. 

These  Skraelings  were  clad  in  skins,  and  their 
weapons  were  bows  and  arrows,  slings,  and  stone 
hatchets.  In  the  latter  we  may  now,  I  think,  be 
allowed  to  recognize  the  familiar  tomahawk  ;  and 
when  we  read  that,  in  a  sharp  fight  with  the  na- 
tives, Thorbrand,  son  of  the  commander  Snorro, 
was  slain,  and  the  woman  Freydis  afterward  found 
his  corpse  in  the  woods,  with  a  flat  stone  sticking 
in  the  head,  and  his  naked  sword  lying  on  the 
ground  beside  him,  we  seem  to  see  how  it  all  hap- 
pened.2  We  seem  to  see  the  stealthy 
Indian  suddenly  dealing  the  death-blow, 
ukely  Aigon-^  and  then  obliged  for  his  own  safety  to 
'^^^-  dart  away  among  the  trees  without  re- 

covering his  tomahawk  or  seizing  the  sword.  The 
Skraelings  came  up  the  river  or  lake  in  a  swarm  of 

1  ' '  Mais  qnSt  h  noz  Sauvages,  pour  ce  qui  regarde  les  ieux  ilz 
ne  les  ont  ni  bleuz,  ni  verds,  mais  noirs  pour  la  pluspart,  ainsi  qne 
les  cheveux  ;  &  neantmoina  ne  sont  petits,  cSme  ceux  des  anciens 
Scythes,  maia  d'une  grandeur  bien  agi-eable."  Lescarbot,  ffis« 
toire  de  la  Nouvelle  France,  Paris,  1612,  torn.  ii.  p.  714. 

2  "  Hiin  fann  fyrir  sfer  mann  dandhan,  thar  var  Thorbrandr 
Snorrason,  ok  8t6dh  hellusteinn  i  hofdhi  honum  ;  sverdhit  l.i  bert 
1  hjA  honum,"  i.  e.  "  Ilia  inciditin  mortuum  hominem,  Thorbran- 
dum  Snorrii  filiura,  cnjus  capiti  lapis  planus  impactus  stetit ;  nu< 
das  juxta  eum  gladius  jacuit"     Rafn,  p.  154. 


The  SkrsB- 
lings  of  Vin- 
land  were  In' 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


191 


ilz 

jne 

lens 

ft'*- 

Indr 
[)ert 
pn- 
lnu< 


canoes,  all  yelling  at  the  top  of  their  voices  (e< 
illi  omnes  valdc  acutum  ididabant^^  and,  leaping 
ashore,  began  a  formidable  attack  with  slings  and 
arrows.  The  narrative  calls  these  canoes  "skin- 
boats  "  (hudhkeijiar),  whence  it  has  been  inferred 
that  the  writer  had  in  mind  the  kayaks  and  umiaks 
of  the  Eskimos.^  I  suspect  that  the  writer  did 
have  such  boats  in  mind,  and  accordingly  used  a 
word  not  strictly  accurate.  Very  likely  his  author- 
ities failed  to  specify  a  distinction  between  bark- 
boats  and  skin-boats,  and  simply  used  the  handiest 
word  for  designating  canoes  as  contrasted  with 
their  own  keeled  boats.^ 

One  other  point  which  must  be  noticed  here  in 
connection  with  the  Skraelings  is  a  singular  ma- 
noeuvre which  they  are  said  to  have  practised  in 
the  course  of  the  fight.  They  raised  upon  the  end 
of  a  pole  a  big  ball,  not  unlike  a  sheep's  paunch, 
and  of  a  bluish  colour  ;  tliis  ball  they  swung  from 
the  pole  over  the  heads  of  the  white  men,  and 
it  fell  to  the  ground  with  a  horrid  noise.^     Now, 

^  These  Eskimo  skin-boatii  are  described  in  Rink's  Banish 
Greenland,  pp.  113,  179. 

^  Cf.  Storm,  op.  cit.  pp.  366,  367. 

*  "  That  sd  their  Karlsefni  at  SkraBliiigar  fserdhu  upp  A  stbng 
knott  stundar  mykinn  thW  naer  til  at  jafna  sem  saudharvomb,  ok 
helzt  bliln  at  lit,  ok  fleygdhu  af  stonginui  upp  &  landit  yfir  lidh 
theirra  Karlsefnis,  ok  l^t  illilega  vidhr,  thar  sem  nidhr  kom. 
Vidh  thetta  s\6  6tta  myklum  d  Karlsefni  ok  allt  lidh  bans,  sva  at 
thd  fysti  eng^s  annars  enn  fl^ja,  ok  halda  undan  upp  medh  dnni, 
thv|at  theim  th6tti  lidh  SkraeHnga  drifa  at  s^r  allum  meg^n,  ok 
l^tta  eigi,  f  jtt  enn  their  koma  til  harara  nokkurra,  ok  veittu  thar 
vidhrtiiku  hardha,"  i.  e.  "  Viderunt  Karlsefniani  quod  Skralingi 
lougurio  sustulerunt  globum  ingentem,  veiitri  ovillo  baud  absi- 
milem,  colore  fere  cairuleo ;  hunc  ex  longurio  in  terram  super 
manum  Karlsefnianorum  contorserunt,  qui  ut  deuidit,  dirum  sc 


192 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


according  to  Mr.  Schoolcraft,  this  was  a  mode  of 
fighting  formerly  common  among  the  Algonquins, 
in  New  England  and  elsewhere.  This  big  ball  was 
what  Mr.  Schoolcraft  calls  the  "  balista,"  or  what 
the  Indians  themselves  call  the  "demon's  head." 
It  was  a  large  round  boulder,  sewed  up  in  a  new 
skin  and  attached  to  a  pole.  As  the  skin  dried  it 
enwrapped  the  stone  tightly ;  and  then  it  was 
daubed  with  grotesque  devices  in  various  colours. 
"  It  was  borne  by  several  warriors  who  acted  as 
balisteers.  Plunged  upon  a  boat  or  canoe,  it  was 
capable,  of  sinking  it.  Brought  down  upon  a 
group  of  men  on  a  sudden,  it  produced  consterna- 
tion and  death."  ^  This  is  a  most  remarkable 
feature  in  the  narrative,  for  it  shows  us  the  Ice- 
landic writer  (here  manifestly  controlled  by  some 
authoritative  source  of  information)  describing  a 
very  strange  mode  of  fighting,  which  we  know 
to  have  been  characteristic  of  the  Algonquins. 
Karlsefni's  men  do  not  seem  to  have  relished  this 
outlandish  style  of  fighting  ;  they  retreated  along 
the  river  bank  until  they  came  to  a  favourable  situ- 
ation among  some  rocks,  where  they  made  a  stand 
and  beat  off  their  swarming  assailants.  The  lat- 
ter, as  soon  as  they  found  themselves  losing  many 
warriors   without    gaining   their   point,   suddenly 

nuit.  Hac  re  terrore  perculsiis  est  Karlsefiiius  suique  omnes,  ut 
nihil  aliud  cuperent  quam  f  ugero  et  gradum  ref  erre  sursum  secun- 
dum fluvium  :  credebant  enim  se  ab  SkrseUngis  undiqiie  circum- 
veniri.  Hinc  non  gradum  stitere,  priusquam  ad  nipes  quasdam 
pervenissent,  ubi  acriter  resistebant."     Rafn,  p.  153. 

^  Schoolcraft,  Archives  of  Aboriginal  Knowledge,  Philadelphia, 
18G0,  G  vols.  4to,  vol.  i.  p.  89 ;  a  figure  of  this  weapon  is  given  in 
the  same  volume,  plate  xv.  fig.  2,  from  a  careful  description 
by  Chingwauk,  an  Algonquin  chief. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


193 


turned  and  fled  to  their  canoes,  and  paddled  away 
with  astonishing  celerity.  Throughout  the  account 
it  seems  to  me  perfectly  clear  that  we  are  dealing 
with  Indians. 

The  coexistence  of  so  many  unmistakable  marks 
of  truth  in  our  narratives  may  fairly  be  said  to 
amount  to  a  demonstration  that  they  must  be  de- 
rived, through  some  eminently  trustworthy  chan- 
nel, from  the  statements  of  intelligent  eye-wit- 
nesses who  took  part  in  the  events  related.  Here 
and  there,  no  doubt,  we  come  upon  some  improb- 
able incident  or  a  touch  of  superstition,  such  as 
we  need  not  go  back  to  the  eleventh 

,  .      n      1  The  unip«d. 

century  to  lincl  very  common  among  sea- 
men's narratives ;  but  the  remarkable  thing  in  the 
present  case  is  that  there  are  so  few  such  features. 
One  fabulous  creature  is  mentioned.  Thorfinn  and 
his  men  saw  from  their  vessel  a  glittering  speck 
upon  the  shore  at  an  opening  in  the  woods.  They 
hailed  it,  whereupon  the  creature  proceeded  to  per- 
form the  quite  human  act  of  shooting  an  ^rrow, 
which  killed  the  man  at  the  helm.  The  narrator 
calls  it  a  "  uniped,"  or  some  sort  of  one-footed 
goblin,^  but  that  is  hardly  reasonable,  for  after  the 
shooting  it  went  on  to  perform  the  further  quite 
human  and  eminently  Indian-like  act  of  running 
away.'^  Evidently  this  discreet  "  uniped  "  was  im- 
pressed with  the  desirableness  of  living  to  fight 

1  Rafn,  p.  100 ;  De  Costa,  p.  134  ;  Storm,  p.  330. 

2  Here  the  narrator  seems  determined  to  give  us  a  genuine 
emaek  ui  the  marvellous,  for  when  the  fleeing  uniped  comes  to  a 
place  where  his  retreat  seems  cut  off  by  an  arm  of  the  sea,  he 
runs  (glides,  or  hops  ?)  across  the  water  without  sinking.  In 
Vigfusson's  version,  however,  the  marvellous  is  eliminated,  and 


194 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


another  clay.  In  a  narrative  otherwise  character, 
ized  by  sobriety,  such  an  instance  of  fancy,  even 
supposing  it  to  have  come  down  from  the  original 
sources,  counts  for  as  much  or  as  little  as  Henry 
Hudson's  cescT-iption  of  a  mermaid.^ 

It  is  now  time  for  a  few  words  upon  the  charac- 
ter of  the  records  upon  which  our  story  is  based. 
And  firoc,  let  us  remark  upon  a  possible  source  of 
misapprehension  due  to  the  associations  with  which 
a  certain  Norse  word  has  been  clothed.  The  old 
Norse  narrative  -  writings  are  called  "sagas,"  a 
word  which  we  are  in  the  habit  of  using  in  Eng- 
lish as  equivalent  to  legendary  or  semi-mythical 
Misleading  uarrativcs.  To  cite  a  "  saga  "  as  author- 
^th  «!i°word  i*y  for  a  statement  seems,  therefore,  to 
"saga."  some  people  as  inadmissible  as  to  cite  a 
fairy-tale  ;  and  I  cannot  help  suspecting  that  to 
some  such  misleading  association  of  ideas  is  due 
the  particular  form  of  the  opinion  expressed  some 
time  ago  by  a  committee  of  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society,  —  "  that  there  is  the  same  sort 
of  reason  for  believing  in  the  existence  of  Leif 
Ericsson  that  there  is  for  believing  in  the  exist- 
ence of  Agamemnon.      They  are  both  traditions 

the  creature  simply  runs  over  the  stubble  and  disappears.  The 
incident  is  evidently  an  instance  where  the  narrative  has  been 
"embellished"  by  introducing  a  feature  from  ancient  classical 
writers.  The  "Monocoli,"  or  one-legged  people,  are  mentioned 
by  Pliny,  Hist.  Nat.,  vii.  2 :  "  Item  borainum  genus  qui  Monocoli 
vocarentur,  singulis  cruribus,  mirse  pernicitatis  ad  saltum. ' '  Cf . 
Aulus  Gellius,  Noctes  Atticte,  viii.  4. 

^  Between  Spitzbergen  and  Nova  Zembla,  June  15,  1608.  For 
the  descriptioii,  with  its  droll  details,  see  Purchas  his  Pilgrimes, 
iii.  575. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


195 


accepted  by  later  writers,  and  there  is  no  more 
reason  for  regarding  as  true  the  details 
related  about  the  discoveries  of  the  for-  compariHou 

•  I  ji  •      i>  ,•  1  •         between  Leif 

mer  than  there  is  tor  accepting  as  his-  EricBson  and 
toric  truth  the  narrative  contained  in 
the  Homeric  poems."  The  report  goes  on  to  ob- 
serve that  "it  is  antecedently  probable  that  the 
Northmen  discovered  America  in  the  early  part  of 
the  eleventh  century ;  and  this  discovery  is  con- 
firmed by  the  same  sort  of  historical  tradition,  not 
strong  enough  to  be  called  evidence,  upon  which 
our  belief  in  many  of  the  accepted  facts  of  history 
rests."  ^  The  second  of  these  statements  is  char- 
acterized by  critical  moderation,  and  expresses  the 
inevitable  and  wholesome  reaction  against  the  rash 
enthusiasm  of  Professor  Rafn  half  a  century  ago, 
and  the  vagaries  of  many  an  uninstructed  or  un- 
critical writer  since  his  time.  But  the  first  state- 
ment is  singularly  unfortunate.  It  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  find  a  comparison  more  inappropriate  than 
that  between  Agamemnon  and  Leif,  between  the 
Iliad  and  the  Saga  of  Eric  the  Ked.  The  story  of 
the  Trojan  War  and  its  heroes,  as  we  have  it  in 
Homer  and  the  Athenian  dramatists,  is  pure  folk- 
lore as  regards  form,  and  chiefly  folk- 
lore as  regards  contents.  It  is  in  a  the^TrojL" 
high  degree  probable  that  this  mass  of  have  it  jl* 

/■ni  1  1  1        p      1    •       pure  folk-lore. 

lolk-lore    surrounds   a   kernel   or  plain 
fact,  that  in  times  long  before  the  first  Olympiad 
an  actual  "  king  of  men  "  at  My  cense  conducted  an 
expedition  against   the  great  city  by  the  Simois, 
that  the  Agamemnon  of  the  poet  stands  in  some 

^  Proceedings  Mass,  Hist.  Soc.,  December,  1887. 


196 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA, 


such  relation  toward  this  chieftain  as  that  in  which 
the  Charlemagne  of  mediaeval  romance  stands  to- 
ward the  mighty  Emperor  of  the  West.^  Never- 
theless the  story,  as  we  have  it,  is  shuply  folk-lore. 
If  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  contain  faint  reminis- 
cences of  actual  events,  these  events  are  so  inex- 
tricably wrapped  up  with  mythical  phraseology 
that  by  no  cunning  of  the  scholar  can  they  be  con- 
strued into  history.  The  motives  and  capabilities 
of  the  actors  and  the  conditions  under  which  they 
accomplish  their  destinies  are  such  as  exist  only  in 
fairy-tales.  Their  world  is  as  remote  from  that 
in  which  we  live  as  the  world  of  Sindbad  and  Ca- 
maralzaman  ;  and  this  is  not  essentially  altered  by 
the  fact  that  Homer  introduces  us  to  definite  local- 
ities and  familiar  customs  as  often  as  the  Irish 
legends  of  Finn  M'Cumhail.^ 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  anything  more  unlike 

such  writings  than  the  class  of  Icelandic  sagas  to 

which  that  of  Eric   the    Red  belongs.     Here   we 

have  '  iiiet  and  sober  narrative,  not  in 

The  Saga  of  ^       -,     '       ^'^ 

Eric  the  Red  is  the  Icast  like  a  fairy-tale,  but  often  much 

not  folk-lore.  i  •    ,       i  -ixn 

like  a  ship  s  log.  Whatever  such  nar- 
rative may  be,  it  is  not  folk-lore.  In  act  and 
motive,  in  its  conditions  and  laws,  its  world  is  the 
every-day  world  in  which  we  live.  If  now  and 
then  a  "  uniped  "  happens  to  stray  into  it,  the  in- 

1  I  used  this  argument  twenty  years  ago  in  qualification  of  the 
over-zealous  solarizing  views  of  Sir  G.  W.  Cox  and  others.  See 
ray  Myths  and  Mythmakers,  pp.  101-202 ;  and  cf .  Freeman  on 
"  The  Mythical  and  Romantic  Elements  in  Early  English  History," 
in  his  Historical  Essays,  i.  l-;39. 

■^  Curtin,  Myths  and  Folk-Lore  of  Ireland,  pp.  12,  204,  303  J 
Kennedy,  Legendary  Fictions  of  the  Irish  Celts,  pp.  203-311. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


197 


He 

be 

pn 
I'* 


congruity  is  as  conspicuous  as  in  the  case  of  Hud- 
son's mermaid,  cr  a  ghost  in  a  modern  country 
inn ;  whereas  in  the  Homeric  fabric  the  super- 
natural is  warp  and  woof.  To  assert  a  likeness 
between  two  kinds  of  literature  so  utterly  different 
is  to  go  very  far  astray. 

As  already  observed,  I  suspect  that  misleading 
associations  with  the  word  "  saga "  may  have 
exerted  an  unconroious  influence  in  producing  this 
particular  kind  of  blunder,  —  for  it  is  nothing  less 
than  a  blunder.  Resemblance  is  tacitly  assumed 
between  the  Iliad  and  an  Icelandic  saga.  Well, 
between  the  Iliad  and  some  Icelandic  sagas  there 
is  a  real  and  strong  resemblance.  In  truth  these 
sagas  are  divisible  into  two  well  marked  and 
sharply  contrasted  classes.  In  the  one  class  be- 
long the  Eddie  Lays,  and  the  mythical  sagas^  such 
as  the  Volsunga,  the  stories  of  Ragnar, 

,         ,  .         Mythical  and 

Frithiof,  and  others  ;    and  along  with  iiistoricai 

.  .  sagas. 

these,  though  totally  different  in  source, 
we  may  for  our  present  purpose  group  the  roman- 
tic sagas,  such  as  Parceval,  Remund,  Karlamag- 
nus,  and  others  brought  from  southern  Europe. 
These  are  alike  in  being  composed  of  legendary 
and  mythical  materials  ;  they  belong  essentially  to 
the  literature  of  folk-lore.  In  the  other  class 
come  the  historical  sagas,  such  as  those  of  Njal 
and  Egil,  the  Sturlunga,  and  many  others,  with 
the   numerous    biographies   and   annals.^      These 

^  Nowhere  can  you  find  a  more  masterly  critical  account  of 
Icelandic  literature  than  in  Vigf  usson's  "  Prolegomena "  to  his 
edition  of  Sturlunga  Saga,  Oxford,  1878,  vol.  i.  pp.  ix.-ccxiv. 
There  is  a  good  but  very  brief  account  in  Horn's  History  of  the 


ii 


198 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


writings  give  us  history,  and  often  very  good  hia* 
tory  indeed.  "  Saga  "  meant  simply  any  kind  of 
literature  in  narrative  form  ;  the  good  j^eople  of 
Iceland  did  not  happen  to  have  such  a  handy 
word  as  "  history,"  which  they  coidd  keep  entire 
when  they  meant  it  in  sober  earnest  and  chop 
down  into  "  story  "  when  they  meant  it  otherwise. 
It  is  very  much  as  if  we  were  to  apply  the  same 
word  to  the  Arthur  legends  and  to  William  of 
Malmesbury's  judicious  and  accurate  chronicles, 
and  call  them  alike  "  stories." 

The  narrative  upon  which  our  account  of  the 
Vinland  voyages  is  chiefly  based  belongs  to  the 
class  of  historical  sagas.  It  is  the  Saga  of  Eric 
the  Red,  and  it  exists  in  two  different  versions,  of 
which  one  seems  to  have  been  made  in  the  north, 
the  other  in  the  west,  of  Iceland.  The  western 
version  is  the  earlier  and  in  some  respects  the 
-TK       f     „,  better.     It  is  found  in  two  vellums,  that 

The  western  or  ' 

Hauks-bok        ^f  ^}jg  great  collection  known  as  Hauks- 

version  of  Eric  r> 

the  Red's  Saga,  i^j^  (^^M.  544),  and  that  which  is 
simply  known  as  AM.  557  from  its  catalogue 
number  in  Arni  Magnusson's  collection.  Of  these 
the  former,  which  is  the  best  preserved,  was  writ- 
ten in  a  beautiful  hand  by  Hauk  Erlendsson, 
between  1305  and  1334,  the  year  of  his  dr  h. 
This  western  version  is  the  one  which  has  generally 
been  prin'-ed  under  the  title,  "  Saga  of  Thorfinn 
Karlsefni."  It  is  the  one  to  which  I  have  most 
frequently  referred  in  the  present  chapter.^ 

Literature  of  the  Scamlinavian  North,  transl.  by  R.  B.  Anderson, 
Chicago,  1884,  pp.  50-70. 
^  It  is  printed  in  Eafu,  pp.  84-187,  and  in  Gr (inlands  historiskt 


PRE-COLVMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


199 


The  northern  version  is  that  which  was  made 
about  the  year  1387  by  the  priest  Jon  Thordhar- 
8on,  and  contained  in  the  famous  compihition 
known  as  the  Flateyar-hok,  or  "  Flat  Island 
Book."  ^  This  priest  was  editing  the 
saj^a  of  Kins:  Olaf  Irviiiirvesson,  which  ot  Kuteyar- 
18  contained  in  that  compilation,  and 
inasmuch  as  Leif  Ericsson's  presence  at  King 
Olaf's  court  was  connected  both  with  the  introduc- 
tion of  Christianity  into  Greenland  and  with  the 
discovery  of  Vinland,  Jon  paused,  after  the  man- 
ner of  mediaeval  chroniclers,  and  inserted  then  and 
there  what  he  knew  about  Eric  and  Leif  and  Thor- 
linn.  In  doing  this,  he  used  parts  of  the  original 
saga  of  Eric  the  Red  (as  we  find  it  reproduced  in 
the  western  version),  and  added  thereunto  a  con- 
siderable amount  of  material  concerning  the  Vin- 
land voyages  derived  from  other  sources.  Jon's 
version  thus  made  has  generally  been  printed  under 
the  title,  ''  Saga  of  Eric  the  Red."  2 

Now  the  older  version,  written  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  fourteenth  century,  gives  an  account 
of  things  which  happened  three  centuries  before  it 
was  written.  A  cautious  scholar  will,  as  a  rule,  be 
slow  to  consider  any  historical  narrative  as  quite 

Mt'ndesmcerker,  i.  352-443.  The  most  essential  part  of  it  may 
now  be  found,  under  its  own  name,  in  Vigf  ussou's  Icelandic  Prose 
Header,  pp.  12.S-140. 

^  It  belonged  to  a  man  who  lived  on  Flat  Island,  in  one  of  the 
Iceland  fiords. 

^  It  is  printed  in  Rafn,  pp.  1-76,  under  the  title  "Thfettiraf 
Eireki  Rauda  ok  Gr.TGnlendfngum."  For  a  critical  account  of 
these  versions,  see  Storm,  op.  cit.  pp.  319-325  ;  I  do  not,  in  all  re- 
spects, follow  him  in  his  depreciation  of  the  Flateyar-b(5k  version. 


i 


II 


lU 


v 


200 


4\ 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


satisfactory  authority,  even  when  it  contains  no  im- 
Presumption  P^obable  Statements,  unless  it  is  nearly 
sources  not  Contemporary  with  the  events  which  it 
contemporary,  rccords.  Such  was  the  rulc  laid  down 
by  the  late  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis,  and  it 
is  a  very  good  rule  ;  the  proper  application  of  it 
has  disencumbered  history  of  much  rubbish.  At 
the  same  time,  like  all  rules,  it  should  be  used  with 
judicious  caution  and  not  allowed  to  run  away  with 
us.  As  applied  by  Lewis  to  Roman  history  it 
would  have  swept  away  in  one  great  cataclysm  not 
only  kings  and  decemvirs,  but  Brennus  and  his 
Gauls  to  boot,  and  left  us  with  nothing  to  swear 
by  until  the  invasion  of  Pyrrhus.^  Subsequent  re- 
search has  shown  that  this  was  going  altogether  too 
far.  The  mere  fact  of  distance  in  time  between  a 
document  and  the  events  which  it  records  is  only 
negative  testimony  against  its  value,  for  it  may  be 
a  faithful  transcript  of  some  earlier  document  or 
documents  since  lost.  It  is  so  difficult  to  prove 
a  negative  that  the  mere  lapse  of  time  simply 
raises  a  presumption  the  weight  of  wh^'ch  should 
be  estimated  by  a  careful  survey  of  all  the  prob- 
abilities^ in  the  case.  Among  the  many  Icelandic 
vellums  that  are  known  to  have  perished^  there 

^  Leviiij's  Inquiry  into  thi  Credibility  of  the  Early  Roman  His- 
tory,  2  voSm.,  London,  185;"), 

2  And  viotably  in  thio  terrible  fire  of  October,  1728,  which 
consnmed  \lie  Univci'sity  Library  at  Copenhagen,  and  broke  the 
heart  of  the  noble  collector  of  manuscripts,  Ami  Magnusson.  The 
great  eriiptioo  oi  Hecla  in  l;]flO  overwhelmed  two  famous  home- 
steads in  the  immediate  neighbourhood.  From  the  local  history 
of  these  homesteads  and  tlieir  iimiates,  Vigfusson  thinks  it  not 
unlikely  that  some  records  may  still  be  there  "awaiting  the  spade 
and  pickaxe  of  a  new  iSchliemann."     Sturlunga  Saga,  p.  cliv. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


201 


may  well  have   been  earlier  copies  of   Erie  the 
Red's  Saga. 

Hauk  Erlendsson  reckoned  himself  a  direct  de- 
scendant, in  the  eighth  generation,  from  Snorro, 
son  of  Thorfinn  and  Gudrid,  born  in  Vinland. 
He  was  an  important  personage  in  Iceland,  a  man 
of  erudition,  author  of  a  brief  book  of  contempo- 
rary annals  and  a  treatise  on  arithmetic  in  which 
he  introduced  the  Arabic  numerals  into  Iceland. 
In  those  days  the  lover  of  books,  if  he 

^i  1-1.1  ji'1-1  •1,     Hauk  Erlends- 

wbuid    add   them  to  ms  hbrary,  might  son  and  his 

-,     ,1  1  ,    •  •    •       1  mauuBcripts. 

now  and  then  obtain  an  original  manu- 
script, but  usually  he  had  to  copy  them  or  have 
them  copied  by  hand.  The  Hauks-bok,  with  its 
200  skins,  one  of  the  most  extensive  Icelandic  vel- 
lums now  in  existence,  is  really  Hank's  private 
library,  or  what  there  is  left  of  it,  and  it  sliows  that 
he  was  a  man  who  knew  how  to  make  a  good 
choice  of  books.  He  did  a  good  deal  of  his  copy- 
ing himself,  and  also  employed  two  clerks  in  the 
same  kind  of  work.^ 

Now  I  do  not  suppose  it  will  occur  to  any 
rational  being  to  suggest  that  Hauk  may  have 
written  down  his  version  of  Eric  the  Red's  Saga 
from  an  oral  tradition  nearly  three  centuries  old. 
The  narrative  could  not  have  been  so  long  pre- 
served in  its  integrity,  with  so  little  extravagance 
of  statement  and  so  many  marks  of  truthfulness  in 
details  foreign  to  ordinary  Icelandic  experience,  if 

1  An  excellent  facsimile  of  Hank's  handwriting  is  given  in 
Rafn,tab.  iii.,  lower  part;  tab.  iv.  and  the  upper  pari  of  tab. 
iii.  are  in  the  hands  of  his  two  amanuenses.  iSce  Vigfuseun, 
if),  ctt.  p.  clxi. 


202 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


t 


The  story  is 
not  likely  to 
have  been  pre^ 
served  to 
Hank's  time 
by  oral  tradi- 
tion only. 


it  had  been  entrusted  to  oral  tradition  alone.  One 
might  as  weU  try  to  imagine  Drake's 
"  World  Encompassed "  handed  down 
by  oral  tradition  from  the  days  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  to  the  days  of  Queen  Victoria. 
Such  transmission  is  possible  enough 
with  heroic  poems  and  folk-tales,  which  deal  with 
a  few  dramatic  situations  and  a  stock  of  mythical 
conceptions  familiar  at  every  fireside ;  but  in  a 
simple  matter-of-fact  record  of  sailors'  observa- 
tions and  experiences  on  a  strange  coast,  oral 
tradition  would  not  be  long  in  distorting  and 
jumbling  the  details  into  a  result  quite  undecipher- 
able. The  story  of  the  Zeno  brothers,  presently  to 
be  cited,  shows  what  strange  perversions  occur, 
even  in  written  tradition,  when  the  copyist,  instead 
of  faithfully  copying  records  of  unfamiliar  events, 
tries  to  edit  and  amend  them.  One  cannot  reason- 
ably doubt  that  Hauk's  vellum  of  Eric  the  Red's 
Saga,  with  its  many  ear-marks  of  truth  above  men- 
tioned, was  copied  by  him  —  and  quite  carefully 
and  faithfully  withal  —  from  some  older  vellum 
not  now  forthcoming. 

As  we  have  no  clue,  however,  beyond  the  inter- 
nal evidence,  to  the  age  or  character  of  the  sources 
from  which  Hauk  copied,  there  is  nothing  left  for 
us  to  do  but  to  look  into  other  Icelandic 
documents,  to  see  if  anywhere  they  be- 
tray a  knowledge  of  Vinland  and  the 
voyages  thither.  Incidental  references  to  Vinland, 
in  narratives  concerned  with  other  matters,  are  of 
great  significance  in  this  connection ;  for  they  im- 
ply on  the  part  of  the  narrator  a  presumption  that 


Allusions  to 
Vinland  in 
other  docu- 
ments. 


i    1 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


203 


his  readers  understand  such  references,  and  that  it 
is  not  necessary  to  interrupt  his  story  in  order  to 
explain  them.  Such  incidental  references  imply 
the  existence,  during  the  interval  between  the 
Vinland  voyages  and  Hauk's  manuscript,  of  many 
intermediate  links  of  sound  testimony  that  have 
since  dropped  out  of  sight ;  and  therefore  they  go 
far  toward  removing  whatever  presumption  may 
be  alleged  against  Hauk's  manuscript  because  of 
its  distance  from  the  events. 

Now  the  Eyrbyggja  Saga,  written  between  1230 
and  1260,  is  largely  devoted  to  the  settlement  of 
Iceland,  and  is  full  of  valuable  notices  of  the  hea- 
then institutions  and  customs  of  the  tenth  cen- 
tury. The  Eyrbyggja,  having  occasion  gyrbyggja 
to  speak  of  Thorbrand  Snorrason,  ob-  ^"k*- 
serves  incidentally  that  he  went  from  Greenland 
to  Vinland  with  Karlsefni  and  was  killed  in  a  bat- 
tle with  the  Skraelings.i  We  have  already  men- 
tioned the  death  of  this  Thorbrand,  and  how  Frey- 
dis  found  his  body  in  the  woods. 

Three  Icelandic  tracts  on  geography,  between 
the  twelfth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  mention  Hel- 
luland  and  Vinland,  and  in  two  of  these  accounts 
Markland  is  interposed  between  Helluland  and 
Vinland.2  One  of  these  tracts  mentions  the  voy- 
ages of  Leif  and  Thorfinn.  It  forms  part  of  an 
essay  called  "  Guide  to  the  Holy  Land,"  by  Nik- 

^  Vigfusson,  Eyrbyggja  Saga,  pp.91,  92.  Another  of  Karlsef- 
ni's  comrades,  Thorhall  Qamlason,  is  mentioned  in  Grettis  Saga, 
Copenhagen,  1859,  pp.  22,  TO;  he  went  back  to  Iceland,  settled 
on  a  farm  there,  and  was  known  for  the  rest  of  his  life  as  "  the 
Vinlander."     See  above,  pp.  165,  168. 

^  Werlauf,  Symbolcs  ad  Geogr.  Medii  ^vi,  Copenhagen,  1820. 


1 


204 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Ari  Fr6dhi. 


ulas  Saemimdsson,  abbot  of  Thvera,  in  the  north 
The  abbot  ^^  Iceland,  who  died  1159.  This  Nik- 
Nikuiaa,  etc.  ^^  ^^^  curious  in  matters  of  geogra- 
phy, and  had  travelled  extensively. 

With  the  celebrated  Ari  Thorgilsson,  usually 
known  as  Frodhi,  "  the  learned,"  we  come  to  tes- 
timony nearly  contemporaneous  in  time  and  ex- 
tremely valuable  in  character.  This  erudite  priest, 
born  in  1067,  was  the  founder  of  historical  writing 
in  Iceland.  He  was  the  principal  author  of  the 
"  Landnama-bok,"  already  mentioned  as  a  work 
of  thorough  and  painstaking  research 
unequalled  in  mediaeval  literature.  His 
other  principal  works  were  the  "  Konungarbok," 
or  chronicle  of  the  kings  of  Norway,  and  the 
"  Islendinga-bok,"  or  description  of  Iceland.^  Ari's 
books,  written  not  in  monkish  Latin,  but  in  a  good 
vigorous  vernacular,  were  a  mine  of  information 
from  which  all  subsequent  Icelandic  historians 
were  accustomed  to  draw  such  treasures  as  they 
needed.  To  his  diligence  and  acumen  they  were 
all,  from  Snorro  Sturlason  down,  very  much  in- 
debted. He  may  be  said  to  have  given  the  tone 
to  history-writing  in  Iceland,  and  it  was  a  high 
tone. 

Unfortunately  Ari's  Islendinga-bok  has  per- 
ished. One  cannot  help  suspecting  that  it  may 
have  contained  the  contemporary  materials  from 
which  Eric  the  Red's  Saga  in  the  Hauks-bok  was 

^  For  a  critical  estimate  of  Ari's  literary  activity  and  the  ex- 
tent of  his  work,  the  reader  is  referred  to  Mobins,  Are^s  Isldnder- 
buch,  Leipsic,  1869;  Maurer,  "Uber  Ari  Thorgilsson  und  sein 
Islanderbuch,"  in  Germania,  xv.  ;  Olsen,  Ari  Thorgilsson  hinn 
Frddhi,  Reykjavik,  1889,  pp.  214-240. 


,"V 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


205 


ultimately  drawn.  For  Ari  made  an  abridgment 
or  epitome  of  his  great  book,  and  this  epitome, 
commonly  known  as  "  Libellus  Islandorum,"  still 
survives.  In  it  Ari  makes  brief  mention  of  Green- 
land, and  refers  to  his  paternal  micle,  Thorkell 
Gellison,  as  authority  for  his  statements.  This 
Thork6ll  Gellison,  of  Helgafell,  a  man  of  high 
consideration  who  flourished  about  the 
middle  of  the  eleventh  century,  had  vis-  cant*aih!iion 
ited  Greenland  and  talked  with  one  of 
the  men  who  accompanied  Eric  when  he  went  to 
settle  in  Brattahlid  in  986.  From  this  source  Ari 
gives  us  the  interesting  information  that  Eric's 
party  found  in  Greenland  "  traces  of  human  habi- 
tations, fragments  of  boats,  and  stone  implements  ; 
so  from  this  one  might  conclude  that  people  of  the 
kind  who  inhabited  Vinland  and  were  known  by 
the  (Norse)  Greenlanders  as  Skraelings  must  have 
roamed  about  there."  ^  Observe  the  force  of  this 
allusion.  The  settlers  in  Greenland  did  not  at 
first  (nor  for  a  long  time)  meet  with  barbarous  or 
savage  natives  there,  but  only  with  the  vestiges  of 
their  former  presence.  But  when  Ari  wrote  the 
above  passage,  the  memory  of  Vinland  and  its 
fierce  Skraelings  was  still  fre^h,  and  Ari  very  prop- 
erly inferred  from  the  arch^jological  remains  in 


I 


)m 

iras 

|ex- 

ier- 
bein 
linn 


^  Their  "  fundo  thar  manna  vister  baethi  anstr  ok  vestr  &  landi 
ok  kajiplabrot  ok  steinsrafthi,  that  es  af  thvi  mi  scilja,  at  Ihar 
hafdhi  thessconar  thj<5th  farith  es  Vhiland  hefer  bygt,  ok  Graen- 
lendlnger  calla  SkreHnga,"  i.  e.  "  inveiienint  ibi,  tain  in  orientali 
quam  occidentali  terrsB  parte,  humanse  habitationis  vestigia,  navi- 
cularum  fragraenta  et  opera  fabrilia  ex  lapide,  ex  quo  intelligi 
potest,  ibi  versatum  esse  uationem  quaa  Vinlandiam  incoLuit  quaiu- 
que  Grasulandi  Skraelingoa  appellant."    Bain,  p.  207. 


206 


THE  DISCOVEllY  OF  AMERICA. 


; 


« 


Greenland  that  a  people  similar  (in  point  of  bar- 
barism) to  the  Skraelings  must  have  been  there. 
Unless  Ari  and  his  readers  had  a  distinct  recollec- 
tion of  the  accounts  of  Vinland,  such  a  reference 
would  have  been  only  an  attempt  to  explain  the 
less  obscure  by  the  more  obscure.  It  is  to  be  re- 
gretted that  we  have  in  this  book  no  more  allusions 
to  Vinland ;  but  if  Ari  could  only  leave  us  one 
such  allusion,  he  surely  could  not  have  made  that 
one  more  pointed. 

But  this  is  not  quite  the  only  reference  that  Ari 
makes  to  Vinland.  There  are  three  others  that 
must  in  all  probability  be  assigned  to  him.  Two 
occur  in  the  Landniima-bok,  the  first  in  a  pas- 
sage where  mention  is  made  of  Ari  Marsson's  voy- 
age to  a  place  in  the  western  ocean  near  Vin- 
land ;  ^  the  only  point  in  this  allusion  which  need 
here  concern  us  is  that  Vinland  is  tacitly  assumed 
other  refer-  *^  ^^  ^  kuowu  geographical  situation  to 
ences.  whicli  othcrs  may  be  referred.    The  sec- 

ond reference  occurs  in  one  of  those  elaborate  and 
minutely  specific  genealogies  in  the  Landnama- 
bok :  "  Their  son  was  Thordhr  Hest-hcifdhi,  fa- 
ther of  Karlsefni,  who  found  Vinland  the  Good, 
Snorri's  father,"  etc.^  The  third  reference  occurs 
in  the  Kristni  Saga,  a  kind  of  supplement  to  the 
Landnama-bok,  giving  an  account  of  the  intro- 
duction of  Christianity  into  Iceland ;  here  it  is  re- 
lated how  Leif  Ericsson  came  to  be  called  "  Leif 
the  Lucky,"  1.  from  having  rescued  a  shipwrecked 
crew  off  the  coast  of  Greenland,  2.  from  having 

^  Landndma-bdk,  part  ii.  chap.  xxii. 
^  Id.  part  ill.  chap.  x. 


'  m 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


207 


discovered  "  Vinland  the  Good."  ^  From  these 
brief  allusions,  and  from  the  general  relation  in 
which  Ari  Frodhi  stood  to  later  writers,  I  suspect 
that  if  the  greater  Islendinga-bok  had  survived 
to  our  time  we  should  have  found  in  it  more  about 
Vinland  and  its  discoverers.  At  any  rate,  as  to 
the  existence  of  a  definite  and  continuous  tradition 
all  the  way  from  Ari  down  to  Haidi  Erlendsson, 
there  can  be  no  question  whatever.^ 

^  Kriatni  Saga,  apud  Biskupa  Sogur,  Copenhagen,  1858,  vol.  i. 
p.  20. 

^  Indeed,  the  parallel  existence  of  the  Flateyar-b6k  version  of 
Eric  the  Red's  Saga,  alongside  of  the  Hauks-b^k  version,  is  pretty 
good  proof  of  the  existence  of  a  written  account  older  than  Hank's 
time.  The  discrepancies  between  the  two  versions  are  such  as  to 
show  that  J6n  Thordharson  did  not  copy  from  Hank,  but  followed 
some  other  version  not  now  forthcoming.  J(5n  mentions  six  voy- 
ages in  connection  with  Vinland :  1.  Bjarni  Herjulfsson  ;  2.  Leif ; 
3.  Thorvald  ;  4,  Thorstein  and  Gudrid ;  5.  Thorfinn  Karlsefni  ; 
0.  Freydis.  Hauk,  on  the  other  hand,  mentions  only  the  two 
principal  voyages,  those  of  Leif  and  Thorfinn ;  ignoring  Bjarni, 
lie  accredits  his  adventures  to  Leif  on  his  return  voyage  from 
Norway  in  999,  and  he  makes  Thorvald  a  comrade  of  Thorfinn, 
and  mixes  his  adventures  with  the  events  of  Thorfinn's  voyage. 
Dr.  Storm  considers  Hauk's  account  intrinsically  the  more  prob- 
able, and  thinks  that  in  the  Flateyar-b6k  we  have  a  later  amplifi- 
cation of  the  tradition.  But  while  I  agree  with  Dr.  Storm  as  to 
the  general  superiority  of  the  Hauk  version,  I  am  not  convinced 
by  his  arguments  on  this  point.  It  seems  to  me  likely  that  the 
Flateyar-b(5k  here  preserves  more  faithfully  tlie  details  of  an  older 
tradition  too  summarily  epitomized  in  the  Hauks-b(5k.  As  the 
point  in  no  way  affects  the  general  conclusions  of  the  present 
chapter,  it  is  hardly  worth  arguing  here.  The  main  thing  for  us 
is  that  the  divergencies  between  the  two  vei-aions,  when  coupled 
with  their  agreement  in  the  most  important  features,  indicate 
that  both  writers  were  working  upon  the  basis  of  an  antecedent 
•written  tradition,  like  the  authors  of  the  first  and  third  synoptic 
gospels.  Only  here,  of  course,  there  are  in  the  divergencies  no 
symptoms  of  what  the  Tiibingen  school  would  call  ^^tendenz,^^ 
impairing  and  obscui'iug  to  an  indeterminate  extent  the  general 


208 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


The  testimony  of  Adam  of  Bremen  brings  us  yet 
one  generation  nearer  to  the  \'inland  voyages,  and 
AdamofBre-  IS  Very  significant.  Adam  was  much 
""^  interested   in  the  missionary   work   in 

the  north  of  Europe,  and  in  1073,  the  same  year 
that  Hiklebrand  was  elected  to  the  papacy,  he  pub- 
lished his  famous  "Historia  Ecclesiastica,"  in 
which  he  gave  an  account  of  the  conversion  of  the 
northern  nations  from  the  time  of  Leo  III.  to  that 
of  Hildebrand's  predecessor.  In  prosecuting  his 
studies,  Adam  made  a  visit  to  the  court  of  Swend 
Estridhsen,  king  of  Denmark,  nephew  of  Cnut  the 
Great,  king  of  Denmark  and  England.  Swend's 
reign  began  in  1047,  so  that  Adam's  visit  must 
have  occurred  between  that  date  and  1073.  The 
voyage  of  Leif  and  Thorfinn  would  at  that  time 
have  been  within  the  memory  of  living  men,  and 
would  be  likely  to  be  known  in  Denmark,  because 
the  intercourse  between  the  several  parts  of  the 
Scandinavian  world  was  incessant;  there  was  con- 
tinual coming  and  going.  Adam  learned  what  he. 
coidd  of  Scandinavian  geography,  and  when  he 
published  his  history,  he  did  just  what  a  modern 
writer  would  do  under  similar  circumstances;  he 
appended  to  his  book  some  notes  on  the  geography 
of  those  remote  countries,  then  so  little  known  to 
his  readers  in  central  and  southern  Europe.  After 
giving  some  account  of  Denmark,  Sweden,  and 
Norway,  he  describes  the  colony  in  Iceland,  and 


trustworthiness  of  the  narratives.  On  the  whole,  it  is  pretty  clear 
that  Hauks-b6k  and  FIateyar-b6k  were  independent  of  each  other, 
and  collated,  each  in  its  own  way,  earlier  documents  that  hava 
probably  since  perished. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


209 


then  the  further  colony  in  Greenland,  and  con- 
cludes by  saying  that  out  in  that  ocean  there  is  an- 
other country,  or  island,  which  has  been  visited  by 
many  persons,  and  is  called  Vinland  because  of 
wild  grapes  that  grow  there,  out  of  which  a  very 
good  wine  can  be  made.  Either  rumour  had  exag- 
gerated the  virtues  of  fox-grape  juice,  or  the 
Northmen  were  not  such  good  judges  of  wine  as  of 
ale.  Adam  goes  on  to  say  that  corn,  likewise, 
grows  in  Vinland  without  cultivation ;  and  as  such 
a  statement  to  European  readers  must  needs  have 
a  smack  of  falsehood,  he  adds  that  it  is  based  not 
upon  fable  and  guess-work,  but  upon  "trustworthy 
reports  (certa  relatione)  of  the  Danes." 

Scanty  as  it  is,  this  single  item  of  strictly  con- 
temporary testimony  is  very  important,  because 
quite  incidentally  it  gives  to  the  later  accounts  such 
confirmation  as  to  show  that  they  rest  upon  a  solid 
basis  of  continuous  tradition  and  not  upon  mere 
unintelligent  hearsay.^  The  unvarying  character 
of  the  tradition,  in  its  essential  details,  indicates 
that  it  must  have  been  committed  to  writing  at  a 
very  early  period,  probably  not  later  than  the  time 
of  Ari's  uncle  Thorkell,  who  was  contemporary 
with  Adam  of  Bremen.     If,  however,  we  read  the 

1  It  is  further  interesting  as  the  only  undoubted  reference  to 
Vinland  in  a  mediaeval  book  written  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
Scandinavian  world.  There  is  also,  however,  a  passage  in  Orderi- 
cus  Vitalis  (Historia  Ecci^iastica,  iv.  29),  in  which  Finland  and 
the  Orkneys,  along  with  Greenland  and  Iceland,  are  loosely  de- 
scribed as  forming  part  of  the  dominions  of  the  kings  of  Norway. 
This  Finland  does  not  appear  to  refer  to  the  counti-y  of  the  Finns, 
east  of  the  Baltic,  and  it  has  been  supposed  that  it  may  have  beea 
meant  for  Vinland.  The  book  of  Ordericus  was  written  about 
1140. 


I 


>V=l^i  JI>^mJ«"I  * 


210 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


■^P 


'k. 


whole  passage  in  which  Adam's  mention  of  Vinland 
occurs,  it  is  clear  from  the  context  that  his  own 
information  was  not  derived  from  an  inspection  of 
Icelandic  documents.  He  got  it,  as  he  tells  us,  by 
talking  with  King  Swend ;  and  all  that  he  got,  or 
all  that  he  thought  worth  telling,  was  this  curious 
fact  about  vines  and  self-sown  corn  growing  so 
near   to   Greenland;    for   Adam   quite 

Adam's  mis-  .  •       i      i  •  •  <•    tt  i 

conception  of    miscouccivcd  the  Situation  of   vinland, 

the  situation.  .  .        ,    .       „  •         i         i> 

and  imag-ned  it  far  up  m  the  frozen 
North.  After  his  mention  of  Vinland,  the  conti- 
nental character  of  which  he  evidently  did  not  sus- 
pect, he  goes  on  immediately  to  say,  "After  this 
island  nothing  inhabitable  is  to  be  foimd  in  that 
ocean,  all  being  covered  with  unendurable  ice  and 
boundless  darkness."  That  most  accomplished 
king,  Harold  Hardrada,  says  Adam,  tried  not 
long  since  to  ascertain  how  far  the  northern  ocean 
extended,  and  plunged  along  through  this  darkness 
until  he  actually  reached  the  end  of  the  world,  and 
came  near  tumbling  off  !  ^    Thus  the  worthy  Adam, 

^  The  passage  from  Adam  of  Bremen  deserves  to  be  quoted  in 
full:  "Praeterea  unam  adhuu  insulam  [regionam]  recitavit  [i.  e. 
Svendus  rex]  a  multis  in  eo  repertam  oceano,  quae  dicitur  Vin- 
land, eo  quod  ibi  vites  sponte  nascantur,  vinum  bonum  gerentes 
[ferentea]  ;  nam  et  fruges  ibi  non  semiuatas  abundare,  non  fabu- 
losa  opinions,  sed  certa  comperimus  relatione  Danorum.  Post 
quam  insulam  terra  nulla  invenitur  habitabilis  in  illo  oceano,  sed 
omnia  quse  ultra  sunt  glacie  intolerabili  ac  caligine  immensa 
plena  sunt ;  cujus  rei  Marcianus  ita  meminit :  ultra  Thyle,  in- 
quiens,  navigare  unius  diei  mare  concretum  est.  Tentavit  hoc 
nuper  experientissimus  Nordmannorum  princeps  Haroldus,  qui 
latitndinem  septentrionalis  oceani  perserutatus  navibus,  tandem 
caligantibus  ante  ora  deficientis  mundi  finibus,  immane  abyssi 
baratrum,  retroactis  vestigiis,  vix  salvus  evasit."  Descriptio  in- 
tvdarum  aquilonis,  cap.  38,  apud  Hist.  Ecclesiastica,  iv.  ed.  Lin* 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


211 


while  telling  the  truth  about  fox -grapes  and  maize 
as  well  as  he  knew  how,  spoiled  the  effect  of  his 
story  by  putting  Vinland  in  the  Arctic  regions. 
The  juxtaposition  of  icebergs  and  vines  was  a  little 
too  close  even  for  the  mediaeval  mind  so  hospitable 
to  strange  yarns.  Adam's  readers  generally  dis- 
believed the  "trustworthy  reports  of  the  Danes," 
and  when  they  thought  of  Vinland  at  all,  doubt- 
less thought  of  it  as  somewhere  near  the  North 
Pole.^  We  shall  do  well  to  bear  this  in  mind  when 
we  come  to  consider  the  possibility  of  Columbus 
having  obtained  from  Adam  of  Bremen  any  hint 
in  the  least  likely  to  be  of  use  in  his  own  enter- 
prise.'^ 


! 


I 


u- 

ist 

3d 

Isa 
[n- 

loo 
lui 
Im 

Bsi 


To  sum  up  the  argument :  —  we  have  in  Eric  the 
Red's  Saga,  as  copied  by  Hauk  Erlends-  summary  of 
son,    a  document  for  the  existence  of  "'*  argument. 
which  we  are  required  to  account.     That  document 

denbrog',  Leyden,  1595.  No  such  voyage  is  known  to  have  been 
undertaken  by  Harold  of  Norway,  nor  is  it  likely.  Adam  was 
probably  thinking  of  an  Arctic  voyage  undertaken  by  one  Thorir 
under  the  auspices  of  King  Harold ;  one  of  the  company  brought 
back  a  polar  bear  and  gave  it  to  King  Swend,  who  was  much 
pleased  with  it.  See  Rafn,  3o9.  "  Regionam  "  and  "ferentes" 
in  the  above  extract  are  variant  readings  found  in  some  editions. 

^  "  Det  har  imidlertid  ikke  forhindret  de  senere  forfattere,  der 
benyttede  Adam,  fra  at  blive  mistienksomme,  og  smiljenge  Adams 
beretning  stod  alene,  har  man  i  regelen  vtegret  sig  for  at  tro  den. 
Endog  den  norske  forfatter,  der  skrev  '  Historia  Norvegiae '  og 
somforuden  Adam  vel  ogsaa  har  kjendt  de  hjemlige  sagn  om  Vin- 
land, maa  have  anseet  berotningen  for  fabelagtig  og  derfor  for- 
bigaaet  den ;  han  kjendte  altfor  godt  Gr0nland  som  et  nordligt 
isfyldt  Polarland  til  at  ville  tro  paa,  at  i  neerheden  fandtes  et 
Vinland."  Storm,  in  ^lari^^er /or  Nordisk  Oldkyndighed,  etc., 
Copenhagen,  1887, ;      00. 

'^  See  below,  p.  3fc.— 


li ,  I 


212 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


contains  unmistakable  knowledge  of  some  things 
which  mediajval  Europeans  could  \,y  no  human 
possibility  have  learned,  except  through  a  visit  to 
some  part  of  the  coast  of  North  America,  further 
south  than  Labrador  or  Newfoundland.  It  tells 
an  eminently  probable  story  in  a  simple,  straight- 
forward way,  agi'eeing  in  its  details  with  what  we 
know  of  the  North  American  coast  between  Point 
Judith  and  Cape  Breton.  Its  general  accuracy 
in  the  statement  and  grouping  of  so  many  remote 
details  is  proof  that  its  statements  were  controlled 
by  an  exceedingly  strong  and  steady  tradition,  — 
altogether  too  strong  and  steady,  in  my  opinion,  to 
have  been  maintained  simply  by  word  of  mouth. 
Tliese  Icelanders  were  people  so  much  given  to 
writing  that  their  historic  records  during  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  were,  as  the  late  Sir  Richard  Burton 
tridy  observed,  more  complete  than  those  of  any 
other  country  in  Europe.^  It  is  probable  that  the 
facts  mentioned  in  Hank's  document  rested  upon 
some  kind  of  a  wi'itten  basis  as  early  as  the  elev- 
enth century;  and  it  seems  quite  clear  that  the 
constant  tradition,  by  which  all  the  allusions  to 
Vinland  and  the  Skraelings  are  controlled,  had  be- 
come established  ^.)y  that  time.  The  data  are  more 
scanty  than  we  could  wish,  but  they  all  point  in 
the  same  direction  as  surely  as  straws  blown  by  a 
steady  wind,  and  their  cumulative  force  is  so  great 
as  to  fall  but  little  short  of  demonstration.  For 
these  reasons  it  seems  to  me  that  the  Saga  of  Eric 
the  Red  should  be  accepted  as  history;  and  there 
is  another  reason  which  might  not  have  counted 
1  Burton,  Ultima  Thule,  Loudon,  1875,  i.  237. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


213 


for  much  at  the  bef^inninf]^  of  this  discussion,  but 
at  the  end  seems  quite  solid  and  worthy  of  resjject. 
The  narrative  begins  with  the  colonization  of 
Greenland  and  goes  on  with  the  visits  to  Vinland. 
It  is  mKjuestionably  sound  history  for  the  first 
part ;  why  should  it  be  anything  else  for  the  second 
part?  What  shall  be  said  of  a  style  of  criticism 
which,  in  dealing  with  one  and  the  same  document, 
arbitrarily  cuts  it  in  two  in  the  middle  and  calls 
the  first  half  history  and  the  last  half  legend? 
which  accepts  its  statements  as  serious  so  long  as 
they  keep  to  the  north  of  the  sixtieth  parallel,  and 
dismisses  them  as  idle  as  soon  as  they  pass  to  the 
south  of  it?  Quite  contrary  to  common  sense,  I 
should  say. 


LC 
'8 

d 


The  only  discredit  which  has  been  thrown  upon 
the  story  of  the  Vinland  voyages,  in  the  eyes  either 
of  scholars  or  of  the  general  public,  has  arisen 
from  the  eager  credulity  with  which  ingenious  an- 
tiquarians have  now  and  then  tried  to  Absurd  specu- 
prove  more  than  facts  will  warrant.  It  Ifur'^tiquMi- 
is  peculiarly  a  case  in  which  the  ju-  *°** 
dicious  historian  has  had  frequent  occasion  to 
exclaim,  Save  me  from  my  friends  !  The  only 
fit  criticism  upon  the  wonderful  argument  from 
the  Dighton  inscription  is  a  reference  to  the 
equally  wonderful  discovery  made  by  Mr.  Pick- 
wick at  Cobham ;  ^  and  when  it  was  attempted, 

*  See  Pickwick  Papers,  chap.  xi.  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Til- 
ling^luist,  of  Harvard  University  Library,  for  calling  my  attention 
to  a  letter  from  Rev.  John  L.athrop,  of  Hoston,  to  Hon.  John 
Davis,  August  10,  1809,  containing  George  Washington's  opinion 
of  the  Dighton  inscription.     When  President  WashingtoP  visited 


214 


TEE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


i      I  ' 


some  sixty  years   ago,    to  prove   that   Governor 

Cambridge  in  the  fall  of  1780,  he  was  shown  about  the  college 
buildings  by  the  president  and  fellows  of  the  i:nivei"sity.  While 
in  the  museum  he  was  observed  to  "fix  his  eye  "  upon  a  full-size 
copy  of  the  Dighton  inscription  made  by  the  librarian,  James 
Winthrop.  Dr.  Lathrop,  who  happened  to  be  standing  near 
Wfishington,  "  ventured  to  give  the  opinion  which  several  learned 
men  had  entertained  with  respect  to  the  origin  of  the  inscription." 
Inasmuch  as  some  of  the  characters  were  thought  to  resemble 
''  oriental ' '  characters,  and  inasmuch  as  the  ancient  Phoenicians 
had  sailed  outside  of  the  Pillars  of  Hercules,  it  was  "  conjec- 
tured ' '  that  some  Phoenician  vessels  had  sailed  into  Narragansett 
bay  and  up  the  Taunton  river,  ' '  While  detained  by  winds,  op 
other  causes  now  unknown,  the  people,  it  has  been  conjectured, 
made  the  inscription,  now  to  be  .-.  jen  on  the  face  of  the  rock,  aad 
which  we  may  suppose  to  be  a  record  of  their  fortunes  or  of  their 
fate." 

"  After  I  had  given  the  above  account,  the  President  smiled 
and  said  he  believed  the  learned  gentlemen  whom  I  had  men- 
tioned were  mistaken ;  and  added  that  in  the  younger  part  of  hiii 
life  his  business  called  him  to  be  very  much  in  the  wilderness  of 
Virginia,  which  gave  him  an  opportunity  to  become  acquainted 
with  many  of  the  customs  and  practices  of  the  Indians.  The 
Indians,  he  said,  had  a  way  of  writing  and  recording  their  trans- 
actions, either  in  war  or  hunting.  When  they  wished  to  make 
any  such  record,  or  leave  an  account  of  their  exploits  to  any  who 
might  come  after  them,  they  scraped  off  the  outer  bark  of  a 
tree,  and  with  a  vegetable  ink,  or  a  little  paint  which  they  car 
ried  with  them,  on  the  smooth  surface  they  wrote  in  a  way  that 
was  generally  understood  by  the  people  of  their  respective  tribes. 
As  he  had  so  often  examined  the  r\ide  way  of  writing  practised 
by  the  Indians  of  Virginia,  and  observed  many  of  the  characters 
on  the  inscription  then  before  him  so  nearly  resembled  the  char- 
acters used  by  the  Indians,  he  had  no  doubt  the  inscription  was 
made  long  ago  by  some  natives  of  America."  Proceedings  of 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  vol.  x.  p.  115.  This  pleasant  an- 
ecdote shows  in  a  new  light  Washington' s  accuracy  of  observa- 
tion and  unfailing  common-sense.  Such  inscriptions  have  been 
found  by  the  thousand,  scattered  over  all  pai-ts  of  the  United 
States ;  for  a  learned  study  of  them  see  Garrick  Mallery,  "  Pic- 
tographs  of  the  North  American  Indians,"  Reports  of  Bureau  of 
Ethnology,  iv.  lo-25U.     "  The  voluminous  discussion  upon  th« 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


215 


Arnold's  old  stone  windmill  at  Newport^  was  a 
tower  built  by  the  Northmen,  no  wonder  if  the 
exposure  of  this  rather  laughable  notion  should 
have  led  many  people  to  suppose  that  the  story  of 
Leif  and  Thorfinn  had  thereby  been  deprived  of 
some  part  of  its  support.  But  the  story  never 
rested  upon  any  such  evidence,  and  does  not  call 
for  evidence  of  such  sort.  There  is  nothing  in  the 
story  to  indicate  that  the  Northmen  ever  founded 

Dighton  rock  inscription,"  says  Colonel  Mallery,  "  renders  it  im- 
possible wholly  to  neglect  it.  .  .  •  It  is  merely  a  type  of  Algon- 
quin rock-carving,  not  so  interesting  as  many  others.  ...  It  is 
of  purely  Indian  origin,  and  is  executed  in  the  peculiar  symbolic 
character  of  the  Kekeewin,"  p.  20.  The  characters  observed 
by  Washington  in  the  Virginia  forests  would  very  probably  have 
been  of  the  same  type.  Judge  Davis,  to  whom  Dr.  Latlirop's 
letter  was  addressed,  publislied  in  ISUD  a  paper  maintaining  the 
Indian  origin  of  the  Dighton  inscription. 

A  popular  error,  once  started  on  its  career,  is  as  hard  to  kill  as 
a  cat.  Otherwise  it  woTild  be  surprising  to  find,  in  so  meritorious 
a  book  as  Oscar  Pesehel's  Geschichte  des  Zeitalters  der  Entdeckun- 
gen,  Stuttgart,  1877,  p.  82,  an  unsuspecting  reliance  upon  Rafn's 
ridiculous  interpretation  of  this  Algonquin  pictograph.  In  an 
American  writer  as  well  equipped  as  Peschel,  this  particular 
kind  of  blunder  would  of  course  be  impossible  ;  and  one  is  re- 
minded of  Humboldt's  remark,  "II  est  des  recherches  qui  ne 
peuvents'ex^euter  que  pr6s  des  sources  memes."  Examen  crit- 
ique, etc.,  tom.  ii.  p.  102. 

In  old  times,  I  may  add,  such  vagaries  were  usually  saddled 
upon  the  Phoenicians,  until  since  Rafn's  time  the  Northmen  have 
taken  their  phice  as  the  pack-horses  for  all  sorts  of  antiquarian 
"conjecture." 

^  See  Palfrey's  History  of  New  England,  vol.  i.  pp.  57-59  ; 
Mason's  Reminiscences  of  Newport,  pp.  392—407.  Laing  {Ileims- 
kringla,  pp.  182-185)  thinks  the  Yankees  must  have  intended  to 
fool  Professor  Rafn  and  tlie  Royal  Society  of  Antiquaries  at 
Copenhagen ;  "  Those  sly  rogues  of  Americans,"  says  he,  "  dearly 
love  a  quiet  hoax ;  ' '  and  he  can  almost  hear  them  chuckling  over 
their  joke  in  their  club-room  at  Newport.  I  am  afraid  these  Yan- 
kees were  less  rogue?  and  more  fools  than  Mr.  Laing  makes  out. 


216 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


There  is  no 
reaaon  for  sup- 
posing tliat  the 
Northmen 
founded  a 
colony  in  Vin- 
land. 


a  colony  in  Vinland,  or  built  durable  buildings 
there.  The  distinction  implicitly  drawn 
by  Adam  of  Bremen,  who  narrates 
the  colonization  of  Iceland  and  sjrreen- 
land,  and  then  goes  on  to  speak  of 
Vinland,  not  as  colonized,  but  simply 
as  discovered,  is  a  distinction  amply  borne  out  by 
our  chronicles.  Nowhere  is  there  the  slightest  hint 
of  a  colony  or  settlement  established  in  Vinland. 
On  the  contrary,  our  plain,  business-like  narrative 
tells  us  that  Thorfinn  Karlsefni  tried  to  found  a 
colony  and  failed;  and  it  tells  us  why  he  failed. 
The  Indians  were  too  many  for  him.  The  North- 
men of  the  eleventh  century,  without  firearms, 
were  in  much  less  favourable  condition  for  with- 
standing the  Indians  than  the  Englishmen  of  the 
seventeenth ;  and  at  the  former  period  there  existed 
no  cause  for  emigration  from  Norway  and  Iceland 
at  all  comparable  to  the  economic,  political,  and 
religious  circumstances  which,  in  a  later  age,  sent 
thousands  of  Englishmen  to  Virginia  and  New 
England.  The  founding  of  colonies  in  America 
in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  was  no 
pastime ;  it  was  a  tale  of  drudgery,  starvation,  and 
bloodshed,  that  curdles  one's  blood  to  read;  more 
attempts  failed  than  succeeded.  Assuredly  Thor- 
finn gave  proof  of  the  good  sense  ascribed  to  him 
when  he  turned  his  back  upon  Vinland.  But  if 
he  or  any  other  Northman  had  ever  succeeded  in 
establishing  a  colony  there,  can  anybody  explain 
why  it  should  not  have  stamped  the  fact  of  its 
existence  either  upon  the  soil,  or  upon  history,  or 
both,  as   unmistakably  as  the  colony  of   Green- 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


21T 


land?  Archaeological  remains  of  the  Northmen 
abound  in  Greenland,  all  the  way  from  Immarti- 
nek  to  near  Cape  Farewell;  the  existence  of  one 
such  relic  on  the  North  American  continent  has 
never  yet  been  proved.  Not  a  single  Noarchieoio- 
vestige  of  the  Northmen's  presence  here,  om^N^irth- 
at  all  worthy  of  credence,  has  ever  been  Cud  south  of 
found.  The  writers  who  have,  from  ^""''  "*"•"**• 
time  to  time,  mistaken  other  things  for  such  ves- 
tiges, have  been  led  astray  because  they  have  failed 
to  distinguish  between  the  different  conditions  of 
proof  in  Greenland  and  in  Vinland.  As  Mr. 
Laing  forcibly  put  the  case,  nearly  half  a  century 
ago,  "Greenland  was  a  colony  with  communica- 
tions, trade,  civil  and  ecclesiastical  establishments, 
and  a  considerable  population,"  for  more  than  four 
centuries.  "Vinland  was  only  visited  by  Hying 
parties  of  woodcutters,  remaining  at  the  utmost 
two  or  three  winters,  but  never  settling  there  per- 
manently. .  .  .  To  expect  here,  as  in  Greenland, 
material  proofs  to  corroborate  the  documentary 
proofs,  is  weakening  the  latter  by  linking  them  to 
a  sort  of  evidence  which,  from  the  very  nature  of 
the  case,  —  the  temporary  visits  of  a  ship's  crew, 
—  cannot  exist  in  Vinland,  and,  as  in  the  case  of 
Greenland,  come  in  to  support  them."^ 

The  most  convincing  proof  that  the  Northmen 
never  founded  a  colony  in  America,  south  of 
Davis  strait,  is  furnished  by  the  total  absence  of 
horses,  cattle,  and  other  domestic  animals  from 
the  soil  of  North  America  until  they  were  brought 
hither  by  the  Spanish,  French,  and  English  set- 

1  Laing,  Heimskringla,  vol.  i.  p.  181. 


218 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


'ji 


tiers  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries. 
If  the  Northmen  had  ever    settled   in 

If  the  North- 

meniiad  V  inland,  they  would  have  brought  cat- 

cessfui  colony,  tie  with  them,  and  if  their  colony  had 

they  would  n    i      •  i  i     -i  • 

haveintro-       been  succcssful,  it  would   have   intro- 
duced  domes-      ■•  t  ■•  i  i       •  i 

tic  cattle  into  duccd  such  Cattle  permanently  into  the 

the  North  t     i        i 

American        faiiua  of  the  couutrv.    Indeed,  our  nar- 

fauna ;  ,  . 

rative  tells  us  that  Karlsefni's  people 
"had  with  them  all  kinds  of  cattle,  having  the 
intention  to  settle  in  the  land  if  they  could."  ^ 
Naturally  the  two  things  are  coupled  in  the  nar- 
rator's mind.  So  the  Portuguese  carried  live- 
stock in  their  earliest  expeditions  to  the  Atlantic 
islands ;  ^  Columbus  brought  horses  and  cows,  with 
vines  and  all  kinds  of  grain,  on  his  second  voyage 
to  the  West  Indies;^  when  the  French,  under 
Baron  Lery,  made  a  disastrous  attempt  to  found  a 
colony  on  or  about  Cape  Breton  in  1518,  they  left 
behind  them,  upon  Sable  island,  a  goodly  stock 
of  cows  and  pigs,  whicL  throve  and  multiplied 
long  after  their  owners  had  ^one ;  *  the  Pilgrims  at 
Plymouth  had  cattle,  goats,  and  swine  as  early  as 
1623.'^    In  fact,  it  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  a 

^  "  Their  hofdhu  medh  s6r  allskonar  f^nadh,  thvfat  tlieir  aetlo- 
dhu  at  byggja  landit,  ef  their  mfetti  that,"  i.  e.,  "  illi  omne  pecu- 
dum  genus  secum  habuerunt,  nam  terrara,  si  liceret,  coloniis 
freqnentare  cogitarunt."     Rafn,  p.  57. 

'■^  Major,  Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,  p.  241. 

8  Irving's  Life  of  Columbus,  New  York,  1828,  vol.  i.  p.  293. 

*  Histoire  chronologique  de  la  Nouvelle  France,  pp.  40,  58 ;  this 
Work,  written  in  1089  by  the  Recollet  friar  Sixte  le  Tac,  has  at 
length  been  published  (Paris,  1888)  with  notes  and  other  original 
documents  by  Eug<!/ne  R^veillaud.  See,  also,  Lset,  Novus  Orbis, 
39. 

*  John  Smith,  Generall  Historie,  247. 


' 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


219 


and  such  ani- 
mals could  not 
have  vanished 
and  left  no 
trace  of  their 
existence. 


community  of  Europeans  subsisting  anywhere  for 
any  length  of  time  without  domestic  animals.  We 
have  seen  that  the  Nortlunen  took  pains  to  raise 
cattle  in  Greenland,  and  were  quick  to  comment 
upon  the  climate  of  Vinland  as  favourable  for  pas- 
turage. To  suppose  that  these  men  ever  fomided 
a  colony  in  North  America,  but  did  not  bring  do- 
mestic animals  thither,  would  be  absurd.  But  it 
would  be  scarcely  less  absurd  to  suppose  that  such 
animals,  having  been  once  fairly  introduced  into 
the  fauna  of  North  America,  would  afterward  have 
vanished  without  leaving  a  vestige  of 
their  presence.  As  for  the  few  cattle 
for  which  Thorfinn  could  find  room  in 
his  three  or  four  dragon-ships,  we  may 
easily  believe  that  his  people  ate  them  up  before 
leaving  the  country,  especially  since  we  are  told 
they  were  threatened  with  famine.  But  that  do- 
mestic cattle,  after  being  supported  on  American 
soil  during  the  length  of  time  involved  in  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  successful  colony  (say,  for  fifty  or 
a  hundred  years),  should  have  disappeared  without 
leaving  abundant  traces  of  themselves,  is  simply 
incredible.  Horses  and  kine  are  not  dependent 
upon  man  for  their  existence ;  when  left  to  them- 
selves, in  almost  any  part  of  the  world,  they  run 
wild  and  flourish  in  what  naturalists  call  a  "feral" 
state.  Thus  we  find  feral  horned  cattle  in  the 
Falkland  and  in  the  Ladrone  islands,  as  weU  as  in 
the  ancient  Chillingham  Park,  in  Northumber- 
land; we  find  feral  pigs  in  Jamaica;  feral  Euro- 
pean dogs  in  La  Plata;  feral  horses  in  Turkestan, 
and  also   in    Mexico,    descended    from    Spanish 


Hi 


f:P' 


520 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


horses.^  If  the  Northmen  had  ever  foimcled  a 
colony  in  Vinland,  how  did  it  happen  that  the 
English  and  French  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  from  that  day  to  this,  have  never  set  eyes  upon 
a  wild  horse,  or  wild  cattle,  pigs,  or  hounds,  or 
any  such  indication  whatever  of  the  former  pre- 
sence of  civilized  Europeans  ?  I  do  not  recollect 
ever  seeing  this  argument  used  before,  but  it 
seems  to  me  conclusive.  It  raises  against  the  hy- 
pothesis of  a  Norse  colonization  in  Vinland  a  pre- 
sumption extremely  difficult  if  not  impossible  to 
overcome.^ 

^  Darwin,  Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication,  London, 
18G8,  vol.  i.  pp.  27,  77,  84. 

^  The  views  of  Professor  Horsford  as  to  the  geographical  situ- 
ation of  Vinland  and  its  supposed  colonization  by  Northmen  are 
set  forth  in  his  four  monograplis,  Discovery  of  America  hy  North' 
men  —  address  at  the  unveiling  of  the  statue  of  Leif  Eriksen,  etc., 
Boston,  1888 ;  The  Problem  of  the  Northmen,  Cambridge,  1889 ; 
The  Discovery  of  the  Ancient  City  of  Norumbega,  Boston,  1800; 
The  Defences  of  Norumbega,  Boston,  1891.  Among  Professor 
Horsford's  conclusions  the  two  principal  are:  1.  that  the  "river 
flowing  through  a  lake  into  the  sea  "  (Rafn,  p.  147)  is  Charles 
river,  and  that  Leif's  booths  were  erected  near  the  site  of  the 
present  Cambridge  hospital ;  2.  that  "  Norumbega "  —  a  word 
loosely  applied  by  some  early  explorers  to  some  region  or  re- 
gions somewhere  between  the  New  Jersey  coast  and  the  Bay  of 
Fundy  —  was  the  Indian  utterance  of  "  Norbega"  or  "  Norway  ; " 
and  that  certain  stone  walls  and  dams  at  ;  d  near  Watertown  are 
vestiges  of  an  ancient  "  city  of  Norumbega,"  which  was  founded 
and  peopled  by  Northmen  and  carried  on  a  more  or  less  extensive 
trade  with  Europe  for  more  than  three  centuries. 

With  regard  to  the  first  of  these  conclusions,  it  is  perhaps  as 
likely  that  Leif's  booths  were  within  the  present  limits  of  Cam- 
bridge as  in  any  of  the  numerous  places  which  different  writers 
have  confidently  assigned  for  them,  all  the  way  from  Point  Judith 
to  Cape  Breton.  A  judicious  scholar  will  object  not  so  much  to 
the  conclusion  as  to  the  character  of  the  arguments  by  which  it  ii 
reached.  Too  much  weight  is  attached  to  hypothetical  etymolo* 
ffies. 


n  ffi 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


221 


re- 

of 

. )» 


ditb 
1  to 
it  i» 
lolo" 


As  for  the  colony  in  Greenland,  while  its  popu- 
lation seems  never  to  have  exceeded  5,000  or 
6,000  souls,  it  maintained  its  existence  Further  for- 
and  its  intercourse  with  Europe  unin-  oreeni^d^coi- 
terruptedly  from  its  settlement  in  986,  °"y- 
by  Eric  the  Red,  for  more  than  four  himdred 
years.  Early  in  the  fourteenth  century  the  West 
Bygd,  or  western  settlement,  near  Godthaab, 
seems  to  have  contained  ninety  farmsteads  and 
four  churches;  while  the  East  Bygd,  or  eastern 
settlement,  near  Julianeshaab,  contained  one  hun- 
di'ed  and  ninety  farmsteads,  with  one  cathedral 
and  eleven  smaller  churches,  two  villages,  and 
three  or  four  monasteries.^  Between  Tunnudlior- 
bik  and  Igaliko  fiords,  and  about  thirty  miles  from 
the  ruined  stone  houses  of  Brattahlid,  there  now 
stands,  imposing  in  its  decay,  the  simple  but  mas- 
sive structure  of  Kakortok  church,  once  the 
"cathedral "  church  of  the  Gardar  bishopric,  where 
the  Credo  was  intoned  and  censers  swung,  while 
not  less  than  ten  generations  lived  and  died. 
About  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century  there 
was  a  movement  at  Rome  for  establishing  new 
dioceses  in  "the  islands  of  the  oce^.i   "  in  1106  a 

With  regard  to  the  Norse  colony  alleged  o  h;i  e  flourished  for 
three  centuries,  it  is  pertinent  to  ask,  what  1  !  „dme  of  its  cattle 
and  horses  ?  Why  do  we  find  no  vestiges  of  the  burial-places  of 
these  Europeans  ?  or  of  iron  tools  and  weapons  of  medifeval 
workmanship  ?  Why  is  there  no  documentary  mention,  in  Scan- 
dinavia or  elsewhere  in  Europe,  of  this  transatlantic  trade  ?  etc., 
etc.  Until  such  points  as  these  are  disposed  of,  any  further  con- 
sideration of  the  hypothesis  may  properly  be  postponed. 

-  Laing,  Heimskringla,  i.  141.  A  description  of  the  ruins  may 
be  found  in  two  papers  in  Meddelelser  om  Gronland,  Cot<enliagen, 
1883  and  1889. 


Ill 


B: 


222 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


bishop's  see  was  erected  in  the  north  of  Iceland, 
and  one  at  about  the  same  time  in  the  Fseroes. 
In  1112,  Eric  Gnupsson,^  having  been  appointed 
by  Pope  Paschal  II.   "bishop  of  Greenland  and 


Ruins  of  the  church  at  Kakortok. 

Vinland  in  partihus  infidelium^^^  went  from  Ice- 
land to  organize  his  new  diocese  in  Greenland. 
It  is  mentioned  in  at  least  six  different  vellums 
Bishop  Eric's  that  lu  1121  Bishop  ' Eric  "went  in 
Mar'dfofVin-  search  of  Vinland." 2  It  is  nowhere 
land,  1121.  mentioned  that  he  found  it,  and  Dr. 
Storm  thinks  it  probable  that  he  perished  in  the 
enterprise,  for,  within  the  next  year  or  next  but 
one,  the  Greenlanders  asked  for  a  new  bishop, 

^  Sometimes  called  Eric  Uppsi ;  he  is  mentioned  in  the  Land. 
ndraa-b6k  as  a  native  of  Iceland. 

"^  Storm,  Islandske  Annaler,  Christiania,  1888 ;  Reeves,  2^h» 
Finding  of  Wineland  the  Good,  London,  1890,  pp.  79-81. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN    VOYAGES. 


223 


and  Eric's  successor,  Bishop  Arnold,  was  con- 
secrated in  1124.^  After  Eric  there  was  a  regu- 
lar succession  of  bishops  appointed  by  the  papal 
court,  down  at  least  to  1409,  and  seventeen  of 
these  bishops  are  mentioned  by  name.  We  do 
not  learn  that  any  of  them  ever  repeated  Eric's 
experiment  of  searching  for  Vinland.  So  far  as 
existing  Icelandic  vellums  know,  there  was  no  voy- 
age to  Vinland  after  1121.  Very  likely,  however, 
there  may  have  been  occasional  voyages  for  timber 
from  Greenland  to  the  coast  of  the  American  con- 
tinent, which  did  not  attract  attention  or  call  for 
comment  in  Iceland.  This  is  rendered  somewhat 
probable  from  an  entry  in  the  "Elder  Skalholt 
Annals,"  a  veUum  written  about  1362.  This  in- 
forms us  that  in  1347  "there  came  a 

i.n  /-N  111  •         •         ,1  The  ship  from 

ship  irom  (jrreenland,  less  in  size  than  MarUand, 

1347. 

small  Icelandic  trading-vessels.     It  was 
without  an  anchor.     There  were  seventeen  men  on 
board,  and  they  had  sailed  to  Markland,  but  had 
afterwards  been  di'iven  hither  by  storms  at  sea."* 

^  Storm,  in  Aarh^ger  for  Nordisk  Oldkyndighed,  1887,  p.  319. 

2  Reeves,  op.  cit.  p.  83.  In  another  vellum  it  is  mentioned  that 
in  1347  "  a  ship  came  from  Greenland,  which  had  sailed  to  Mark- 
land,  and  there  were  eighteen  men  on  board."  As  Mr.  Reeves 
well  observes  :  "  The  nature  of  the  information  indicates  that  the 
knowledge  of  the  discovery  had  not  altogether  faded  from  the 
memories  of  the  Icelanders  settled  in  Greenland.  It  seems  fur- 
ther to  lend  a  measure  of  plausibility  to  a  theory  that  people 
from  the  Greenland  colony  may  from  time  to  time  have  visited 
the  coast  to  the  southwest  of  their  home  for  supplies  of  wood,  or 
for  some  kindred  purpose.  The  visitors  in  this  case  had  evidently 
intended  to  return  directly  from  Markland  to  Greenland,  and 
had  they  not  been  driven  out  of  their  course  to  Iceland,  the  prob- 
ability is  that  this  voyage  would  never  have  found  mention  in 
Icelandic  chronicles,  and  all  knowledge  of  it  must  have  vanished 


224 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA, 


This  is  the  latest  mention  of  any  voyage  to  or 
from  the  countries  beyond  Greenland. 

If  the  reader  is  inclined  to  wonder  why  a  colony 
could  be  maintained  in  southern  Greenland  more 
easily  than  on  the  coasts  of  Nova  Scotia  or  Massa- 
chusetts, or  even  why  the  Northmen  did  not  at 
once  abandon  their  iiords  at  Brattalilid  and  come 
in  a  flock  to  these  pleasanter  places,  he  must  call 
to  mind  two  important  circumstances.  First,  the 
settlers  in  southern  Greenland  did  not  meet  with 
barbarous  natives,  but  only  with  vestiges  of  their 
former  presence.  It  was  not  until  the  twelfth 
century  that,  in  roaming  the  icy  deserts  of  the  far 
north  in  quest  of  seals  and  bearskins,  the  Norse 
hunters  encountered  tribes  of  Eskimo  using  stone 
knives  and  whalebone  arrow-heads ;  ^  and  it  was 
not  until  the  fourteenth  century  that  we  hear  of 
The  Greenland  their  getting  iuto  a  war  with  these 
tSeSby  people.  In  1349  the  West  Bygd  was 
attacked  and  destroyed  by  Eskimos; 
in  1379  they  invaded  the  East  Bygd  and  wrought 
sad  havoc ;  and  it  is  generally  believed  that  some 
time  after  1409  they  completed  the  destruction  of 
the  colony. 

Secondly,  the  relative  proximity  of  Greenland 
to  the  mother  country,  Iceland,  made  it  much  eas- 
ier to  sustain  a  colony  there  than  in  the  more  dis- 
tant Vinland.  In  colonizing,  as  in  campaigning, 
distance  from  one's  base  is  sometimes  the  supreme 
circumstance.     This  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that 

as  completely  as  did  the  colony  to  which  the  Markland  visitors 
belonged." 
^  iStorm,  Monuinenta  historica  Norvegioe,  p.  77. 


PRE-COL  UMBIAN  VO YAGES. 


225 


the  very  existence  of  the  Greenland  colony  itself 
depended  upon  perpetual  and  untranunelled  ex- 
change of  commodities  with  Iceland;  and  when 
once  the  source  of  supply  was  cut  off,  the  colony 
soon  languished.  In  1380  and  1387  the  crowns 
of  Norway  and  Denmark  descended  upon  Queen 
Margaret,  and  soon  she  made  her  precious  contri= 
bution  to  the  innumerable  swarm  of  instances  that 
show  with  how  little  wisdom  the  world  is  nUed. 
She  made  the  trade  to  Greenland,  Iceland,  and 
the  Faeroe  isles  "  a  royal  monopoly  which  ^ 

^  1       ./  Queen  Marga- 

could  only  be  carried  on  in  shii)s  belong-  r''*^'^  "'pnopo 

•^  ^  f       ly,  and  its 

ing  to,  or  licensed  by,  the  sovereign.  fg"^[g^"' *'^* 
.  .  .  Under  the  monopoly  of  trade  the 
Icelanders  could  have  no  vessels,  and  no  object  for 
sailing  to  Greenland ;  and  the  vessels  fitted  out  by 
government,  or  itn  lessees,  would  only  be  ready  to 
leave  Denmark  or  Bergen  for  Jceland  at  the  season 
they  ought  to  have  been  ready  to  leave  Iceland  to 
go  to  Greenland.  The  colony  gradually  fell  into 
oblivion."  1  AVhen  this  prohibitory  management 
was  abandoned  after  1534  by  Christian  III.,  it  was 
altogether  too  late.  Starved  by  the  miserable  pol- 
icy of  governmental  interference  with  freedom  of 
trade,  the  little  Greenland  colony  soon  became  too 
weak  to  sustain  itself  against  the  natives  whose 
hostility  had,  for  half  a  century,  been  growing 
more  and  more  dangerous.     Precisely  when  or  how 

^  Laing,  Heimskringla,  i.  147.  It  has  been  supposed  that  the 
Black  Deatli,  by  which  all  Europe  was  ravaged  in  the  middle 
part  of  the  fourteenth  century,  may  have  crossed  to  Greenland, 
and  fatally  weakened  the  colony  there ;  but  Vig'f usson  says  that 
the  Black  Death  never  touched  Iceland  {Sturlunga  Saga,  vol.  i. 
p.  cxxix.),  so  that  it  is  not  so  likely  to  have  reached  Greenland. 


(■■'•] 


226 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


ill  I 


it  perished  we  do  not  know.  The  latest  notice  we 
have  of  the  colony  is  of  a  marriage  ceremony  per- 
formed (prohahly  in  the  Kakortok  cluirch),  in 
1409,  by  Endrede  Andreasson,  the  last  bishop. ^ 
Whbn,  after  three  centuries,  the  great  missionary, 
Hans  Egede,  visited  Greenland,  in  1721,  he  found 
the  ruins  of  farmsteads  and  villages,  the  popula- 
tion of  which  had  vanished.  , 

Our  account  of  pre-Columbian  voyages  to 
America  would  be  very  incomplete  without  some 
mention  of  the  latest  voyage  said  to  have  been 
made  by  European  vessels  to  the  ancient  settle- 
ment of  the  East  Bygd.  I  refer  to  the  famous  nar- 
_,.     .       ,    rative  of  the  Zeno  brothers,  which  has 

Ine  story  oi  ' 

brothers"'"  fumishcd  SO  many  subjects  of  conten- 
tion for  geographers  that  a  hundred 
years  ago  John  Pinkerton  called  it  "one  of  the 
most  puzzling  in  the  whole  circle  of  literature."^ 
Nevertheless  a  great  deal  has  been  done,  chiefly 
through  the  acute  researches  of  Mr.  Richard 
Henry  Major  and  Baron  Nordenskjold,  toward 
clearing  up  this  mystery,  so  that  certain  points  in 
the  Zeno  narrative  may  now  be  regarded  as  es- 
tablished ;  ^  and  from  these  essential  points  we  may 


m 


vr 


*  Laing,  op.  cit.  i.  142. 

^  Yet  this  learned  historian  was  qnite  correct  in  his  own  inter- 
pretation of  Zeno's  story,  for  in  the  same  place  he  says,  "  If  real, 
his  Frisland  is  the  Ferro  islands,  and  his  Zichmni  is  Sinclair." 
Pinkerton's  History  of  Scotland,  London,  1707,  vol.  i.  p.  201. 

^  Major,  The  Voyages  of  the  Venetian  Brothers,  Nicolb  and 
Antonio  Zeno,  to  the  Northern  Seas  in  ihe  XlVth  Century,  London, 
1873  (Hakhiyt  Society)  ;  cf.  Nordenskjold,  Om  broderna  Zenoa 
resor  och  de  dldsta  kartor  ofner  Norden,  Stockholm,  1883. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


227 


form   an   opinion   nn   to  the  character  of  sundry 
questionable  details. 

The  Zeno  family  was  one  of  the  oldest  and  most 
distinguished  in  Venice.  Among  its  members  in 
the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centu-  xheZenofam. 
rles  we  find  a  doge,  several  senators  and  "^' 
members  of  the  Council  of  Ten,  and  military  com- 
manders of  high  repute.  Of  these,  Pietro  Dracone 
Zeno,  about  1350,  was  captain-general  of  the 
Christian  league  for  withstanding  the  Turks;  and 
his  son  Carlo  achieved  su(!h  success  in  the  war 
against  Genoa  that  he  was  called  the  Lion  of  St. 
Mark,  and  his  services  to  Venice  were  compared 
with  those  of  Camillus  to  Rome.  Now  this  Carlo 
had  two  brothers,  —  Nicolb,  known  as  "  the  Chev- 
alier," and  Antonio.  After  the  close  of  the  Gen- 
oese war  the  Chevalier  Nicolb  was  seized  with  a 
desire  to  see  the  world,  ^  and  more  particularly 
England  and  Flanders.  So  about  1390  he  fitted 
up  a  ship  at  his  own  expense,  and,  passing  out 
from  the  strait  of  Gibraltar,  sailed  northward 
upon  the  Atlantic.  After  some  days  of  fair 
weather,  he  was  caught  in  a  storm  and 

,  .,     Nicolo  Zeno 

blown  along  for  many  days  more,  until  wrecked  upon 

^  "^  '^  '  one  of  the 

at  length  the  ship  was  cast  ashore  on  Fi.roe islands, 

one  of  the  Faeroe  islands  and  wrecked, 

though  most  of  the  crew  and  goods  were  rescued. 

*  "  Or  M.  Nic&16  il  Caualiere  •  .  .  entr&  in  grandissimo  deside- 
rio  di  ueder  il  mondo,  e  peregrinare,  e  farsi  capace  di  varij  cos- 
tumi  e  di  lingue  de  gli  huomini,  acei5  clie  con  le  occasioni  poi 
potesae  raeglio  far  seruigio  alia  sua  patria  ed  h  se  acquistar  fania 
e  onore."  The  narrative  g'ives  l;58()  as  the  date  of  the  voyage,  but 
Mr.  Major  has  shown  that  it  must  have  been  a  mistake  for  1390 
{op.  cit.  xlii.-xlviii.). 


OOQ 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


In 


According  to  the  barbarous  custom  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  some  of  the  natives  of  the  island  (Scandina- 
vians) came  swarming  about  the  unfortunate  stran- 
gers to  kill  and  r^b  them,  but  a  great  cliieftain, 
with  a  force  of  knights  and  men-at-arms,  arrived 
upon  the  spot  in  time  to  prevent  such  an  outrage. 
This  chief  was  Henry  Sinclair  of  lloslyn,  who  in 
1379  had  been  invested  by  King  Hacon  VI.,  of 
Norway,  with  the  earl  'om  of  the  Orkneys  and 
Caitlmess.  On  learning  Zeno's  rank  and  impor- 
tance, Sinclair  treated  him  with  much  courtesy,  and 
presently  a  friendship  sprang  up  between  the  two. 
Sinclair  was  then  engaged  with  a  fleet  of  thirteen 
vessels  in  conquering  and  annexing  to  his  earldom 
the  Fajroe  islands.,  and  on  several  occasions  prof- 
ited by  the  military  and  nautical  skill  of  the  Vene- 
tian captain.  Nicoib  seems  to  have  enjoyed  this 
stirring  life,  for  he  presently  sent  to  his  brother 
Antonio  in  Venice  an  account  of  it,  which  induced 
the  latter  to  come  and  join  him  in  tJie  Fairoe  islands. 
Antonio  arrived  in  the  course  of  1391,  and  remained 
in  the  service  of  Sinclair  fourt(;en  years,  returning 
to  Venice  in  time  to  d'*>  there  in  1406.  After  An- 
tonio's arrival,  his  bi^.xier  Nicoib  was  appointed 
to  the  chief  command  of  Sinclair's  little  fleet,  and 
assisted  him  in  taking  possession  of  the  Shetland 
island  ,  which  were  properly  comprised  within  his 
earldom.  Iix  the  course  of  these  adventures, 
Nicoib  seems  to  have  had  his  interest  aroused  in 
reports  about  Greenland.  It  was  not  more  than 
four  or  five  years  since  Queen  Margaret  had  un- 
dertaken to  make  a  royal  mono})oly  of  the  (xreen- 
land  trade  in  furs  and  whale  oil,  and  this  would 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


229 


be  a  natural  topic  of  conversation  in  the  Fa^'  oes. 
In  July,   1393,  or  1394,  Nicolb  Zeno  sailed  to 
Greenland  with  three  ships,  and  visited 
the  East  Bvffd.     After  spending  some  age  to  ore.-n- 

•^  *  ^  ®  laud,  cir.  13M. 

time  there,  not  being  accustomed  to  such 
a  climate,  he  caught  cold,  and  died  soon  after  his 
return  to  the  Fieroes,  probably  in  1395.  His 
brother  Antonio  succeeded  to  his  office  and  such 
emoluments  as  pertained  to  it ;  and  after  a  while, 
at  Earl  Sinclair's  instigation,  he  undertook  a  voy- 
age of  discovery  in  the  Atlantic  ocean,  in  order 
to  verify  some  fishermen's  reports  of  the  existence 
of  land  a  thousand  miles  or  more  to  the  west. 
One  of  these  fishermen  was  to  serve  as  guide  to 
the  expedition,  but  unfortunately  he  died  three 
d^ys  before  tlie  ships  were  r*^idy  to  sail.  Never- 
theless, the  expedition  started,  with  Sinclair  him- 
self on  board,  and  encountered  vicissi- 

T       (•  Voyapo  of  Earl 

tildes  of  weather  and  fortune.     In  fog  Sinclair  mid 

.  Antonio  Zeno. 

and  storm  they  lost  all  reckoning  of 
position,  and  found  themselves  at  length  on  the 
western  coast  of  a  country  whicli,  in  the  Italian 
narrative,  is  called  "Icaria,"  but  which  has  been 
supposed,  with  some  probability,  to  have  been 
Kerry,  in  Ireland.  Here,  as  they  went  ashore  for 
fresh  water,  they  were  attacked  by  the  natives  and 
several  of  their  number  were  slain.  From  this 
point  they  sailed  out  into  tlie  broad  Atlantic  agjiin, 
and  reached  a  place  supposed  to  be  Greenland,  but 
which  is  so  vaguely  described  that  the  identifica- 
tion is  very  difficult.^     Our  narrative  here  ends 

^  It  appears  on  the  Zeno  map  as  "  Trin  pniontor,"  about  tlie 
lite  of  ^ape  Farewell ;    but  bow  could  six  daya'  sail  W.  from 


^ 

230 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


t> 


P 


11 


somewhat  confusedly.  We  are  told  that  Sinclair 
remained  in  this  place,  "and  explored  the  whole 
of  the  country  with  great  diligence,  as  well  as  the 
coasts  on  both  sides  of  Greenland."  Antonio 
Zeno,  on  the  other  hand,  returned  with  part  of 
the  fleet  to  the  Faeroe  islands,  where  he  arrived 
after  sailing  eastward  for  about  a  month,  during 
five  and  twenty  days  of  which  he  saw  no  land. 
After  relating  these  things  and  paying  a  word  of 
affectionate  tribute  to  the  virtues  of  Earl  Sinclair, 
"a  prince  as  worthy  of  immortal  memory  as  any 
that  ever  lived  for  his  great  bravery  and  remark- 
able goodness,"  Antonio  closes  his  letter  abruptly: 
"  But  of  this  I  will  say  no  more  in  this  letter,  and 
hope  to  be  with  you  very  shortly,  and  to  satisfy 
your  curiosity  on  other  subjects  by  word  of 
mouth."! 

The  person  thus  addressed  by  Antonio  was  his 
brother,  the  illustrious  Carlo  Zeno.  Soon  after 
reaching  home,  after  this  long  and  eventful  ab- 
sence, Antonio  died.  Besides  his  letters  he  had 
written  a  more  detailed  account  of  the  affairs  in 
the  northern  seas.  The..o  papers  remained  for 
more  than  a  century  in  the  palace  of  the  family  at 
Venice,  until  one  of  the  children,  in  his  mischiev- 
ous play,  got  hold  of  them  and  tore    them  up. 

Kerry,  followed  by  four  days'  sail  N.  E. ,  reach  any  such  point  ? 
and  how  does  this  short  outward  sail  consist  with  the  return  voy- 
age, twenty  days  E.  and  eight  days  S.  E.,  to  the  Faroes  ?  The 
place  is  also  said  to  have  had  "  a  fertile  soil  "  and  "  good  rivers," 
a  description  in  nowise  answering  to  Greenland. 

^  "  Per6  non  ui  dir6  altro  in  questa  lettorn,  sperando  tosto  dj 
essere  con  uoi,  e  di  sodisfarui  di  luolte  altre  cusfj  con  la  uiua  uoce." 
Major,  p.  34. 


^^^w 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


231 


le 


This  cliild  was  Antonio's  great-great-great-grand- 
eon,  Nicolb,  born  in  1515.  When  this  young  Ni- 
colo  had  come  to  middle  age,  and  was  a  member  of 
the  Council  of  Ten,  he  happened  to  come  across 
some  remnants  of  these  documents,  and  then  all  at 
once  he  remembered  with  gi'ief  how  he  had,  in  his 
boyhood,  pulled  them  to  pieces.^  In  the  light  of 
the  rapid  progress  in  geographical  discovery  since 
1492,  this  story  of  distant  voyages  had  p„b„eation  of 
now  for  Nicolb  an  interest  such  as  it  the  remains  of 

the  dociiiiieiits 

could  not  have  had  for  his  immediate  bytheymmger 

Nicolu  Zeuo. 

ancestors.  Searching  the  palace  he 
found  a  few  grimy  old  letters  and  a  map  or  sailing 
chart,  rotten  with  age,  which  had  been  made  or  at 
any  rate  brought  home  by  his  ancestor  Antonio. 
Nicolb  drew  a  fresh  copy  of  this  map,  and  pieced 
together  the  letters  as  best  he  could,  with  more  or 
less  explanatory  text  of  his  own,  and  tlie  result 
was  the  little  book  which  he  published  in  1558. '^ 

Unfortunately  young  Nicolb,  with  the  laudable 
purpose  of  making  it  all  as  clear  as  he  could, 

^  "  All  these  letters  were  written  by  Messire  Antonio  to  Messire 
Carlo,  his  brother ;  and  I  am  grieved  tliat  the  book  and  many 
other  writings  on  these  subjects  have,  I  don't  know  how,  come 
sadly  to  ruin ;  for,  being  but  a  child  wher  tiiey  fell  into  my 
h'lnds,  I,  not  knowing  what  they  were,  tore  them  in  pieces,  as 
children  will  do,  and  sent  them  all  to  ruin :  a  i>ircumstance  which 
I  cannot  now  recall  without  the  greatest  sorro  iv.  Nevertli«^less, 
in  order  that  such  an  important  memorial  should  not  be  lost,  I 
Lave  put  the  whole  in  order,  as  well  as  I  could,  in  the  above  nar- 
rative."    Major,  p.  ;]5. 

'^  Nicol6  Zeno,  Delia  scoprimento  deW  isole  Fnslanda,  Eslanda, 
Engronelanda,  Estotilanda,  ^-  Icaria,futto  per  due  fratelli  Zetii, 
M.  Nicolb  it  Caualiere,  ^"  M.  Antonio.  Lihru  Vno,  col  disegno  di 
dette  Isole,  Venice,  1558.  Mr.  Major's  book  contains  the  eutiie 
text,  with  an  English  translation. 


its* 


ir 


■■ 


232  TUE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


CA.y.TA   DA  >ij\vi.GAR.  CE  m<;OLO  XT  AKTONIO  Z£N1 


*lr 


Zeno  Map,  cir.  1400  —  western  half. 


ml 


1 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


233 


Zeuo  Map,  cir.  1400  —  eastern  half. 


234 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Siili 


-If 


thought  it  necessary  not  simply  to  reproduce  the 
old  weather-beaten  map,  but  to  amend  it  by  put- 
ting on  here  and  there  such  places  and  names  as 
his  diligent  perusal  of  the  manuscript  led  him  to 
deem  wanting  to  its  completeness.^  Under  tho 
most  favourable  circumstances  that  is  a  very  diffi- 
cult sort  of  thing  to  do,  but  in  this  case  the  cir- 
cumstances were  far  from  favourable.  Of  course 
Nicolb  got  these  names  and  places   into  absurd 

^  The  map  is  taken  from  Winsor's  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist.,\.  127, 
where  it  is  reduced  from  Nordenskjold's  Studien  ok  Forskningar. 
A  better  because  larger  copy  may  be  found  in  Majoi's  Voyages 
of  the  Venetian  Brothers.  The  original  map  measures  12  X  15^ 
inches.  In  the  legend  at  the  top  the  date  is  given  as  M  OCC  Lzxx. 
but  evidently  one  x  lias  been  omitted,  for  it  should  be  1390,  and 
is  correctly  so  given  by  Marco  Barbaro,  in  his  Genealogie  del  nohili 
Veneti ;  of  Antonio  Zeno  he  says,  "  Scrisse  con  il  fratello  Ni- 
col(i  Kav.  li  viaggi  dell'  Isole  sotto  il  polo  artico,  e  di  quel  sco- 
primente  uel  1390,  e  che  per  ordine  di  Zicno,  re  di  Frislanda,  si 
port6  nel  continente  d'  Estotilanda  nell'  America  settentrionale  e 
che  si  ferm6  14  anni  in  Frislanda,  cio6  4  con  suo  fratello  Nicol6 
e  10  solo."  (This  valuable  work  has  never  been  published.  The 
original  MS.,  in  Barbaro's  own  handwriting,  is  preserved  in  the 
Biblioteca  di  San  Marco  at  Venice.  There  is  a  seventeenth  cen- 
tury copy  of  it  among  the  Egerton  MSS.  in  the  British  Mu- 
seum.) —  Nicol6  did  not  leave  Italy  until  after  December  14, 
1388  (Muratori,  Rerurn  Italicarum  Scriptores,  torn.  xxii.  p.  779). 
The  map  can  hardly  have  been  made  before  Antonio's  voyage, 
about  1400.  The  places  on  the  map  are  wildly  out  of  position,  as 
was  common  enough  in  old  maps.  Greenland  is  attached  to  Nor- 
way according  to  the  general  belief  in  the  Middle  Ages.  In  his 
confusion  between  the  names  "  Estland  "  and  "  Islanda,"  young 
Nicol6  has  tried  to  reproduce  the  Shetland  group,  or  something  like 
it,  and  attach  it  to  Iceland.  "  Icaria,"  probably  Kerry,  in  Ireland, 
has  Vi'en  made  into  an  island  and  carried  far  out  into  the  Atlantic. 
The  queerest  of  young  Nicol6's  mistakes  was  in  placing  the  mon- 
astery of  St.  Olaus  ("  St.  Thomas  ").  He  should  have  placed  it 
on  the  southwest  coast  of  Greenland,  near  his  "  Af  pmontor;  " 
but  he  f)aa  get  it  on  the  extreme  northeast,  just  about  where 
Greenland  is  joined  to  Europe. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


235 


lit 

I" 


positions,  thus  perplexing  the  map  and  damaging 
its  reputation.  With  regard  to  names,  there  was 
obscurity  enough,  to  begin  with.  In  the  first 
place,  they  were  Icelandic  names  falling  upon 
the  Italian  ears  of  old  Nicolb  and  Antonio,  and 
spelled  by  them  according  to  their  own 
notions ;  in  the  second  place,  these  out-  formations  of 
landish  names,  blurred  and  defaced 
withal  in  the  weather-stained  manuscript,  were  a 
puzzle  to  the  eye  of  young  Nicolb,  who  could  but 
decipher  them  according  to  his  notions.  The  havoc 
that  can  be  wrought  upon  winged  words,  subjected 
to  such  processes,  is  sometimes  marvellous.^  Per- 
haps the  slightest  sufferer,  in  this  case,  was  the 
•  name  of  the  group  of  islands  upon  one  of  which  tlie 
shipwrecked  Nicolb  was  rescued  by  Sinclair.     The 

^  "  Combien  de  coquilles  typographiques  ou  de  lectures  d^fec- 
tueuses  ont  cr^4  de  noms  boiteux,  qii'il  est  ensuite  bien  difficile, 
quelquefois  impossible  de  redresser!  I'lilstoire  et  la  g^ograpliie 
en  sont  pleines. "     A\ezac,  Martin  Waltzemiiller ,  p.  9. 

It  is  interesting  to  see  how  thoroughly  words  can  be  disguised 
by  an  unfamiliar  phonetic  spelling.  I  have  seen  people  hope- 
lessly puzzled  by  the  following  bill,  supposed  to  have  been  made 
out  by  an  illiterate  stable-keeper  somewhere  in  England :  — 

Osafada 7s    6d 

Takinonimome 4d 


ValOd 


Some  years  ago  Professor  Huxley  told  me  of  a  letter  from 
France  which  came  to  the  London  post-office  thus  addressed :  —^ 

Sromfrdd^vi, 

Fiqu^  du  lait, 
Londres, 

Angleterre. 

This  letter,  after  exciting  at  first  helpless  bewilderment  and 
then  busy  speculation,  was  at  length  delivered  to  the  right  per- 
son, Sir  Humphry  Davy,  in  his  rooms  at  the  Royal  Institution  on 
Albemarle  street*  just  off  from  Piccadillu  I 


1 1;  'i. 


236 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


ii 


name  Fmroislander  sounded  to  Italian  ears  aa 
Fiidanda^  and  was  uniformly  so  written.^  Then 
the  pronunciation  of  Shetland  was  helped  by  pre- 
fixing a  vowel  sound,  as  is  conmion  in  Italian,  and 
so  it  came  to  be  Eatland  and  Ealand.  This  led 
young  Nicolb's  eye  in  two  or  three  i)laces  to  con- 
found it  with  Islanda^  or  Iceland,  and  probably 
in  one  place  with  hianda,  or  Ireland.  Where 
old  Nicolb  meant  to  say  that  the  island  upon  which 
he  was  living  witli  Earl  Sinclair  was  somewhat 
larger  than  Shetland,  young  Nicolb  understood 
him  as  saying  that  it  was  somewhat  larger  than 
.  Ireland ;  and  so  upon  the  amended  map 
"Frislanda  "  appears  as  one  great  island 
surrounded  by  tiny  islands. ^  After  the  publica- 
tion of  this  map,  in  1558,  sundry  details  were  cop- 
ied from  it  by  the  new  maps  of  that  day,  so  that 
even  far  down  into  the  seventeenth  century  it  was 
common  to  depict  a  big  "Frislanda"  somewhere 
in  mid-ocean.  When  at  length  it  was  proved  that 
no  such  island  exists,  the  reputation  of  the  Zeno 
narrative  was  seriously  damaged.  The  nadir  of 
reaction  against  it  was  reached  when  it  was  de- 
clared to  be  a  tissue  of  lies  invented  by  the  younger 
Nicolb,^  apparently  for  the  purpose  of  setting  up 
a  Venetian  claim  to  the  discovery  of  America. 


1  Colnmbus,  on  his  journey  to  Iceland  in  1477,  also  heard  the 
name  FaroiAr.  nder  as  Frislanda,  and  so  wrote  it  in  tlie  letter  pre- 
served for  ns  in  his  biography  by  his  son  Ferdinand,  hereafter  to 
be  especially  noticed.    See  Major's  remarks  on  this,  oj;.  cit.  p.  xix. 

'^  Perhaps  in  the  old  worn-out  map  the  archipelajro  may  have 
been  blurred  so  as  to  be  mistaken  for  one  island.  This  would  aid 
in  misleading  young  Nico'?). 

'  See  the  elaborate  paper  by  Admiral  Zahrtmann,  in  Nordisk 


kiiLL. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


237 


The  narrative,  however,  not  only  sets  up  no  such 
claim,  but  nowhere  betrays  a  eonsciousness  that  its 
incidents  entitle  it  to  make  such  a  claim.  The  narrative 
It  had  evidently  not  occurred  to  young  m^e7l  claim 
Nicolb  to  institute  any  comparison  be-  covery'of^"^ 
tween  his  ancestors'  voyages  to  Green-  ^™*'"=*- 
land  and  the  voyages  of  Columbus  to  the  western 
hemisphere,  of  which  we  now  know  Greenland  to 
be  a  part.  The  knowledge  of  the  North  Amer- 
ican coast,  and  of  the  bearing  of  one  fact  upon 
another  fact  in  relation  to  it,  was  still,  in  1558,  in 
an  extremely  vague  and  rudimentary  condition. 
In  the  mind  of  the  Zeno  brothers,  as  the  map 
shows,  Greenland  was  a  European  peninsula  ; 
such  was  the  idea  common  among  mediajval  North- 
men, as  is  nowhere  better  illustrated  than  in  this 
map.  Neither  in  his  references  to  Greenland,  nor 
to  Estotiland  and  Drogio,  presently  to  be  consid- 
ered, does  young  Nicolb  appear  in  the  light  of  a 
man  urging  or  suggesting  a  "claim."  He  ap- 
pears simply  as  a  modest  and  conscientious  editor, 
interested  in  the  deeds  of  his  ancestors  and  im- 
pressed with  the  fact  that  he  has  got  hold  of  im- 
portant docmnents,  but  intent  only  upon  giving 
his  material  as  correctly  as  possible,  and  refrain- 
ing from  all  sort  of  comment  except  such  as  now 


I  the 

3re- 

to 

Ixix. 

lave 

aid 

iisk 


Tidsskrift  for  Oldkyndighed,  Copenliag'en,  18o4,  vol.  i.,  and  the 
English  translation  of  it  in  Journal  nf  Royal  Geographical 
Society,  London,  1830,  vol.  v.  All  that  human  ingenuity  is  ever 
likely  to  devise  against  the  honesty  of  Zei;  I's  narrative  is  pre- 
sented in  this  erndite  essay,  which  has  been  so  completely  de- 
molished under  Mr.  Major's  heavy  strokes  that  there  is  not 
enough  of  it  left  to  pick  up.  As  to  this  part  of  the  question,  we 
may  now  safely  cry,  "  finis,  laus  Deo !  " 


238 


TUE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


II 


and  then  seems  needful  to  explain  the  text  as  he 
himself  understands  it. 

The  identification  of  "Frislanda"  with  the 
Faeroe  islands  was  put  beyond  doubt  by  the  dis- 
covery that  the  "Ziehnmi "  of  tlie  narrative  means 
„  ,„,  Henry  Sinclair;  and,  in  order  to  make 

Earl  Sinclair.  .       "^^  '  ' 

this  discovery,  it  was  only  necessary  to 
know  something  about  the  history  of  the  Orlaieys ; 
hence  old  Pinkerton,  as  above  remarked,  got  it 
right.  The  name  "Zichmni  "  is,  no  doubt,  a  fear- 
ful and  wonderful  bejugglement;  but  Henry  Sin- 
clair is  a  personage  well  known  to  history  in  that 
corner  of  the  world,  and  the  deeds  of  "Zichmni,'* 
as  recounted  in  the  narrative,  are  neither  more  noi 
less  than  the  deeds  of  Sinclair.  Doubtless  Anto- 
nio spelled  the  name  in  some  queer  way  of  his 
own,  and  then  young  Nicolb,  unable  to  read  his 
ancestor's  pot-hooks  where  —  as  in  the  case  of 
proper  names  —  there  was  no  clue  to  guide  him, 
(contrived  to  make  it  still  queerer.  PTere  we  have 
strong  proof  of  the  genuineness  of  the  narrative. 
If  Nicolo  had  been  concocting  a  story  in  which 
Earl  Sinclair  was  made  to  figure,  he  would  have 
obtained  his  knowledge  from  literary  sources,  and 
thus  would  have  got  his  names  right;  the  earl 
might  have  appeared  as  Enrico  de  Santo  Claro, 
but  not  as  "Zichmni."  It  is  not  at  all  likely, 
however,  that  any  literary  knowledge  of  Sinclair 
and  his  doings  was  obtainable  in  Italy  in  the  six- 
teenth century.  The  Zeno  narrative,  moreover, 
in  its  referenced  to  Greenland  in  connection  with 
the  Chevalier  Nicolb 's  visit  to  the  East  Bygd, 
shows  a  topographical  knowledge  that  was  other- 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES. 


239 


1(1 
irl 

'O, 

lir 

IX- 

tth 


wiae    quite   iuaccesHible    to  the  younger    Nieolb. 
Late   ill    the   fourteenth    century    Ivur   Bardsen, 
steward  to  the  Gardar  bishoj)ric,  wrote  a  descrip- 
tion of  Greenhind,  with  sailiii}^  direc-  Bardsen'a 
tions  for  reaching-  it,  which  modern  re-  of^oJeeiT'*"* 
search  has  proved  to  have  been  accurate  ^*"'^' 
in  every  particiUar.     Bardsen 's  details  and  those 
of  the  Zeno  narrative  mutually  corroborate  each 
other.     But  Bardsen 's  book  did  not  make  its  way 
down  into  Europe  until  the  very  end  of  the  six- 
teenth century,^  and   then  amid   the  dense  igno- 
rance prevalent  concerning  Greenland  its  details 
were  not  understood  until  actual  exploration  within 
the  laid  seventy  years  has  at  length  revealed  their 
meaning.     The  genuineness  of  the  Zeno  narrative 
is  thus  conclusively  proved  by  its  knowledge  of 
Arctic  geography,  such  as  could  have  been  obtained 
only  by  a  visit  to  the  far  North  at  a  time  before 
the  Greenland  colony  had  finally  lost  touch  with 
its  mother  country. 

The  visit  of  the  Chevalier  Nieolb,  therefore, 
about  1394,  has  a  peculiar  interest  as  the  last  dis- 
tinct glimpse  afforded  us  of  the  colony  founded  by 
Eric  the  lied  before  its  melancholy  disappearance 
from  history.  Already  the  West  Bygd  had  ceased 
to  exist.     Five  and  forty  years  before  that  time  it 

1  It  was  translated  into  Dutch  by  the  famous  Arctic  explorer, 
William  Barentz,  whose  voyages  are  so  graphically  described  in 
Motley's  United  Netherlands,  vol.  iii.  pp.  552-576.  An  English 
translation  was  made  for  Henry  Hudson.  A  very  old  Danish 
version  may  be  found  in  Rafn's  Antiquitates  Atnericance,  pp.  300- 
818;  Danish,  Latin,  and  English  versions  in  Major's  Voyages  of 
the  Venetian  Brothers,  etc.,  pp.  39-54;  and  an  English  version  in 
De  Costa's  Sailing  Directions  of  Ilenry  Hudson,  Albany,  1869, 
pp.  Gl-Uti. 


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240 


THF  DISCOVERT  OF  AMERICA. 


.  ^ 


had  been  laid  waste  and  its  people  massacred  by 
Eskimos,  and  trusty  Ivar  Bardsen,  tardily  sent 
with  a  small  force  to  the  rescue,  found  nothing  left 
alive  but  a  few  cattle  and  sheep  running  wild.* 
Nicolb  Zeno,  arriving  in  the  East  Bygd,  foimd 
Themona*.  there  a  monastery  dedicated  to  St. 
oiausMdits  Olaus,  a  name  which  in  the  narrative 
hotBpring.  j^g  become  St.  Thomas.  To  this  mon- 
astery came  friars  from  Norway  and  other  coun- 
tries, but  for  the  most  part  from  Iceland.^  It 
stood  "hard  by  a  hill  which  vomited  fire  like  Vesu- 
vius and  Etna."  There  was  also  in  the  neighbour- 
hood a  spring  of  hot  water  which  the  ingenious 
friars  conducted  in  pipes  into  their  monastery  and 
church,  thereby  keeping  themselves  comfortable  in 
the  coldest  weather.  This  water,  as  it  came  into 
the  kitchen,  was  hot  enough  to  boil  meats  and  veg- 
etables. The  monks  even  made  use  of  it  in  warm- 
ing covered  gardens  or  hot-beds  in  which  they 
raised  sundry  fruits  and  herbs  that  in  milder  cli- 
mates grow  out  of  doors. ^     "Hither  in  summer- 

^  So  he  tells  U8  himself  t  "Quo  cum  venissent,  nullum  homi- 
nem,  neque  christianum  neque  paganum,  invenerunt,  f.antummodo 
fera  pecora  et  oves  depreher<itTUP.t,  ex  quibus  quantum  naves 
f erre  poterant  in  has  deportato  :^  ^mum  redierunt."  Descriptio 
Grcmlandice,  apnd  Major,  p.  53.  The  glacial  men  had  done  their 
work  of  slaughter  and  vanished. 

*  "Mala  maggior  parte  sono  di jlle  Islande."  Mr.  Major  is 
clearly  wrong  in  translating  it  "  from  the  Shetland  Isles."  The 
younger  Nicol6  was  puzzled  by  the  similarity  of  the  names  Islan- 
da  and  Eslanda,  and  sometimes  confounded  Iceland  with  the  iShet* 
land  group.     But  in  this  place  Iceland  is  evidently  meant. 

*  This  application  of  the  hot  water  to  purposes  of  gardening 
reminds  us  of  the  similar  covered  gardens  or  hot-beds  constructed 
by  Albertus  Magnus  in  the  Duiuinican  munjistery  at  Cologne  ia 
tbe  thirteenth  century.    See  Humboldt's  Koamoa,  ii.  130. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


241 


time  come  many  vessels  from  .  .  .  the  Cape  above 
Norway,  and  from  Trondheim,  and  bring  the 
friars  all  sorts  of  comforts,  taking  in  exchange  fish 
.  .  .  and  skins  of  different  kinds  of  animals. 
.  .  .  There  are  continually  in  the  harbour  a  num- 
ber of  vessels  detained  by  the  sea  being  frozen, 
and  waiting  for  the  next  season  to  melt  the  ice."  ^ 
This  mention  of  the  volcano  and  the  hot  spring 
is  very  interesting.  In  the  Miocene  period  the 
Atlantic  ridge  was  one  of  the  principal 

p  ,         ,  .    .  ,        Volcanoes  of 

seats  or  volcanic  activity  upon  the  the  north  At- 
globe;  the  line  of  volcanoes  extended 
all  the  way  from  Greenland  down  into  central 
France.  But  for  several  hundred  thousand  years 
this  activity  has  been  diminishing.  In  France,  in 
the  western  parts  of  Great  Britain  and  the  Heb- 
rides, the  craters  have  long  since  become  extinct. 
In  the  far  North,  however,  volcanic  action  has 
been  slower  in  dying  out.  Iceland,  with  no  less 
than  twenty  active  volcanoes,  is  stiU  the  most  con- 
siderable centre  of  such  operations  in  Europe. 
The  huge  volcano  on  Jan  Mayen  island,  between 
Greenland  and  Spitzbergen,  is  still  in  action. 
Among  the  submerged  peaks  in  the  northern  seas 
explosions  still  now  and  then  occur,  as  in  1783, 
when  a  small  island  was  thrown  up  near  Cape 
Reykianes,  on  the  southern  coast  of  Iceland,  and 
sank  again  after  a  year.^  Midway  between  Ice- 
land and  Greenland  there  appears  to  have  stood, 

^  Major,  op.  n't.  p.  16.  The  narrative  p^oes  on  to  g^ve  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  skin-boats  of  the  Kskinio  fishermen. 

'^  Daubeny,  Description  of  Active  and  Extinct  Votcanoes,  Lon* 
don,  1848,  pp.  307 ;  of.  Judd,  Volcanoes,  London,  1881,  p.  234. 


242 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


P 

i!  i 


in  the  Middle  Ages,  a  small  volcanic  island  discov- 
ered by  that  Gunnbjorn  who  first  went  to  Green- 
land. It  was  kno^,vn  as  Gunnbjorn'8 
bjorn's  sker-  bkemes,  and  was  described  by  Ivar 
Bardsen.^  This  island  is  no  longer 
above  the  surface,  and  its  fate  is  recorded  ujjon 
Riiyseh's  map  of  the  world  in  the  Ic  08  edition  of 
Ptolemy:  "Insula  haec  anno  Domini  1456  fuit 
totaliter  combusta,"  —  this  island  was  entirely 
burnt  (i.  e.  blown  up  in  an  eruption)  in  1456 ;  and 
in  later  maps  Mr.  Major  has  found  the  corrupted 
name  "Gombar  Scheer"  applied  to  the  dangerous 
reefs  and  shoals  left  behind  by  this  explosion.^ 
Where  volcanic  action  is  declining  geysers  and 
boiling  springs  are  apt  to  abound,  as  in  Iceland; 
where  it  has  become  extinct  at  a  period  geologi- 
cally recent,  as  in  Auvergne  and  the  Rhine  comi- 
try,  its  latest  vestiges  are  left  in  the  hundreds  of 
thermal  and  mineral  springs  whither  fashionable 
invalids  congregate  to  drink  or  to  bathe.  ^  Now 
in  Greenland,  at  the  present  day,  hot 

Volcanic   phe-  .  1.1.11 

nomenain        spriugs  are  fouud,  of  which  the  most 

Greenland.  r        o  '  ^ 

n^ted  are  those  on  the  island  of  Ounar- 
tok,  at  the  entrance  to  the  fiord  of  that   name. 

1  "  Ab  Snefelsneso  Islandiae,  quS  brevissimus  in  Gronlandiam 
trajectus  est,  duorum  dierum  et  duanim  noctium  spatio  navi- 
gandum  est  recto  cureu  versus  occideutem  ;  ibique  GunnbjoBmis 
scopulos  invenies,  inter  Gronlandiam  et  lalandiam  medio  situ 
interjacentes.  Hie  cursus  antiquitfls  frequentabatur,  nunc  vero 
glacies  ex  recessu  oceani  euroaquilonari  delata  scopulos  ante 
niemoratoa  tam  prope  attigit,  ut  nemo  sine  vitse  discriraine 
antiquum  cursum  tenere  possit,  quemadmodum  infra  dicetur." 
Descriptio  GrcRnlandicB,  apud  Major,  op.  cit.  p.  40. 

^  Op.  cit.  p.  Ixxvi.    See  below,  vol.  ii.  p.  116,  note  B. 

8  Judd,  op.  cit.  pp.  217-220. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


243 


These  springs  seem  to  be  the  same  that  were  de- 
scribed five  hundred  years  ago  by  Ivar  Bardsen. 
As  to  volcanoes,  it  has  been  generally  assumed 
that  those  of  Greenland  are  all  extinct ;  but  in  a 
country  as  yet  so  imperfectly  studied  this  only 
means  that  eruptions  have  not  been  recorded.^ 
On  the  whole,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  mention,  in 
our  Venetian  narrative,  of  a  boiling  s])ring  and  an 
active  volcano  in  Greenland  is  an  instance  of  tha 
pecidiar  sort  —  too  strange  to  have  been  invented, 
but  altogether  probable  m  itself  —  that  adds  to  the 
credit  of  the  narrative. 

Thus  far,  in  dealing  with  the  places  actually  vis- 
ited by  Nicolb  or  Antonio,  or  by  both  brothers,  we 
have  found  the  story  consistent  and  intelligible. 
But  in  what  relates  to  countries  beyond  Greenland, 
countries  which  were  not  visited  by  either  of  the 
brothers,  but  about  which  Antonio  heard  reports, 
it  is  quite  a  different  thing.  We  are  introduced 
to  a  jumble  very  unlike  the  clear,  business-like 
account  of  Vinland  voyages  in  the  Hauks-bok. 
Yet  in  this  medley  there  are  some  statements  curi- 
ously suggestive  of  things  in  North  America.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  Antonio's  voyage  with 
Sinclair  (somewhere  about  1400)  was  undertaken 


1 

'i 


*  My  friend,  Professor  Slialor,  tells  me  that  "  a  volcano  during 
eruption  might  shed  its  ice  mantle  and  afterward  don  it  again  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  hide  its  true  character  even  on  a  near  view ;  " 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  "a  voyager  not  familiar  with  volcanoes 
might  easily  mistake  the  cloud-bonnet  of  a  peak  for  the  smoke 
of  a  volcano."  This,  however,  will  not  account  for  Zeno's  "hill 
that  vomited  fire,"  for  he  goes  on  to  describe  the  use  which  the 
monks  made  of  the  pumice  and  calcareous  tufa  for  building  pur« 
poses.  ' 


•5] 


fi;   i^l 


244  xHE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

in  order  to  verify  certain  reports  of  the  existence 
of  land  more  than  a  thousand  miles  west  of  the 
Fajroe  islands. 

About  six  and  twenty  years  ago,  said  Antonio 
in  a  letter  to  Carlo,  four  small  fishing  craft,  ven- 
turing very  far  out  upon  the  Atlantic,  had  been 
blown  upon  a  strange  coast,  where  their  crews 
were  well  received  by  the  people.  The  land 
proved  to  be  an  island  rather  smaller 

Kstotlland.  ^ 

than  Iceland  (or  Shetland  ?),  with  a  high 
mountain  whence  flowed  four  rivers.  The  inhab- 
itants were  intelligent  people,  possessed  of  all  the 
arts,  but  did  not  understand  the  language  of  these 
Norse  fishermen.  1  There  happened,  however,  to 
be  one  European  among  them,  who  had  himself 
been  cast  ashore  in  that  country  and  had  learned 
its  language;  he  could  speak  Latin,  and  found 
some  one  among  the  shipwrecked  men  who  could 
imderstand  him.  There  was  a  populous  city  with 
I  i  walls,  and  the  king  had  Latin  books  in  his  library 

which  nobody  could  read.^  All  kinds  of  metals 
abounded,  and  especially  gold.^  The  woods  were 
of  immense  extent.  The  people  traded  with 
Greenland,  importing  thence  pitch  (?),  brimstone, 
and  furs.  They  sowed  grain  and  made  "beer." 
They  made  small  boats,  but  were  ignorant  of  the 
loadstone  and  the  compass.     For  this  reason,  they 


1  They  were,  therefore,  not  Northmen. 

^  Pruning  this  sentence  of  its  magniloquence,  might  it  perhaps 
mean  that  there  was  a  large  palisaded  village,  and  that  the  chief 
had  jome  books  in  Roman  characters,  a  relic  of  some  castaway, 
which  he  kept  as  a  fetish  ? 

8  With  all  possible  latitude  of  interpretation,  this  could  not  be 
made  to  apply  to  any  part  of  America  north  of  Mexico. 


^^., 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


245 


Drogio. 


held   the   newcomers   in   high   estimation.^     The 
name  of  the  country  was  Estotiland. 

There  is  nothing  so  far  in  tliis  vague  descrip- 
tion to  show  that  Estotiland  was  an  American 
country,  except  its  western  direction  and  perhaps 
its  trading  with  Greenland.  The  points  of  unlike- 
ness  are  at  least  as  numerous  as  the  points  of  like- 
ness. But  in  what  follows  there  is  a  much 
stronger  suggestion  of  North  America. 

For  some  reason  not  specified  an  expedition  was 
undertaken  by  people  from  Estotiland  to  a  country 
to  the  southward  named  Drogio,  and 
these  Norse  mariners,  or  some  of  them, 
because  they  understood  the  compass,  were  put 
in  charge  of  it.^  But  the  people  ol  Drogio  were 
cannibals,  and  the  people  from  Estotiland  on  their 
arrival  were  taken  prisoners  and  devoured,  —  all 
save  the  few  Nortlunen,  who  were  saved  because 
of  their  marvellous  skill  in  catching  fish  with 
nets.  The  barbarians  seemed  to  have  set  much 
store  by  these  white  men,  and  perhaps  to  have  re- 
garded them  as  objects  of  "medicine."  One  of 
the  fishermen  in  particular  became  so  famous  that 
a  neighbouring  tribe  made  war  upon  the  tribe 
which  kept  him,  and  winning  the  victory  took  him 
over  into  its  own  custody.  This  sort  of  thing 
happened  several  times.  Various  tribes  foaglit  to 
secure  the  person  and  services  of  this  Fisherriian, 

^  The  magnetic  needle  had  been  used  by  the  mariners  of  west- 
em  and  northern  Europe  since  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century. 

^  "  Fanno  nauigli  e  nauigano,  ma  non  hanno  la  calainita  ne 
intendeno  col  bossolo  la  traniontana.  Per  ilche  quesli  pescatori 
furono  in  gran  pregio,  si  che  il  re  li  spedi  con  dodici  nauigli  uerao 
98tro  nel  paese  che  essi  chiamano  Drogio."      Major,  op.  cit.  p.  21. 


y 


246 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


\:  • 


SO  tliat  he  was  passed  about  among  more  than 
twenty  chiefs,  and  "wandering  up  and  down  the 
country  without  any  fixed  abo(3e,  .  ^  .  he  became 
acquainted  with  all  those  parts." 

And  now  comes  quite  an  interesting  passage. 
The  Fisherman  "says  that  it  is  a  very  great  coim- 
inhaiitants  of  tij,  and,  as  it  were,  a  new  world;  the 
Countries  b^-'*  people  are  very  rude  and  uncultivated, 
yo»d.  £^j.  ^jjgy.  ^Yi  go  naked,  and  suffer  cruelly 

from  the  cold,  nor  have  they  the  sense  to  clothe 
themselves  with  the  skins  of  the  animals  which 
they  take  in  hunting  [a  gross  exaggeration].  They 
have  no  kind  of  metal.  They  live  by  hunting,  and 
cai'ry  lances  of  wood,  sharpened  at  the  point. 
They  have  bows,  the  strings  of  which  are  made  of 
beasts'  skins.  They  are  very  fierce,  and  have 
deadly  fights  amongst  each  other,  and  eat  one  an- 
other's flesh.  They  have  chieftains  and  certain 
laws  among  themselves,  but  differing  in  the  differ- 
ent tribes.  The  farther  you  go  southwestwards, 
however,  the  more  refinement  you  meet  with,  be- 
cause the  climate  is  more  temperate,  and  accord- 
ingly there  they  have  cities  and  temples  dedicated 
to  their  idols,  in  which  they  sacrifice  men  and 
afterwards  eat  them.  In  those  parts  they  have 
some  knowledge  and  use  of  gold  and  silver.  Now 
this  Fisherman,  having  dwelt  so  many  years  in 
these  parts,  made  up  his  mind,  if  possible,  to  re- 
turn home  to  his  own  country ;  but  his  companions, 
despairing  of  ever  seeing  it  again,  gave  him  God's 
speed,  and  remained  themselves  where  they  were. 
Accordingly,  he  bade  them  farewell,  and  made  his 
escape   through  the    woods    in   the   direction    of 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


247 


Drogio,  where  he  was  welcomed  and  very  kindly 
received  by  the  chief  of  the  place,  who  knew  him, 
and  was  a  great  enemy  of  the  neighbouring  chief- 
tain; and  so  passing  from  one  chief  to  another, 
being  the  same  with  whom  he  had  been  before, 
after  a  long  time  and  with  much  toil,  he  at  length 
reached  Drogio,  where  he  spent  three  years. 
Here,  by  good  luck,  he  heard  from  the  natives  that 
some  boats  had  arrived  off  the  coast;  and  full  of 
hope  of  being  able  to  carry  out  his  intention,  he 
went  down  to  the  seaside,  and  to  his  great  delight 
found  that  they  h/d  come  from  Estotiland.  He 
forthwith  requested  that  they  would  take  him  with 
them,  which  the}  did  very  willingly,  and  as  he 
knew  the  language  of  the  country,  which  none  of 
them  coidd  speak,  they  employed  him  as  their  in- 
terpreter."^ 

Whither  the  Fisherman  was  first  carried  in  these 
boats  or  vessels,  Antonio's  letter  does  not  inform 
us.     We  are  only  told  that  he  engaged  in  some 
prosperous  voyages,  and  at  length  returned  to  the 
Faeroes  after  these  six  and  twenty  years  j^e  Fisher- 
of  strange  adventures.     It  was  appar-  ir^Fris^ 
ently  the  Fisherman's  description  of  Es-  ***" 
totiland  as  a  very  rich  country  {j)a£se  ricchissimo) 
that  led  Sinclair  to  fit  out  an  expedition  to  visit  it, 
with  Antonio  as  his  chief  captain.     As  we  have 
already  seen,  the  Fisherman  died  just  before  the 
ships  were  ready  to  start,  and  to  whatever  land 
they  succeeded  in  reaching  after  they  sailed  with- 
out him,  the  narrative  leaves  us  with  the  impres- 
sion that  it  was  not  the  mysterious  Estotiland. 
1  Major,  op.  cit.  pp.  20-22. 


ii 


I 


248 


TUE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA, 


To  attempt  to  identify  that  country  from  the 
description  of  it,  which  reads  like  a  parcel  of  ill- 
digested  sailors'  yarns,  would  be  idle.  The  most 
common  conjecture  has  identified  it  with  New- 
foundland, from  its  relations  to  other  points  men- 
tioned in  the  Zeno  narrative,  as  indicated,  with 
fair  probability,  on  the  Zeno  map.  To  identify 
it  with  Newfoundland  is  to  brand  the  description 
as  a  "fish  story,"  but  from  such  a  conclusion  there 
seems  anyway  to  be  no  escape. 

With  Drogio,  however,  it  is  otherwise.  The 
description  of  Drogio  and  the  vast  country  stretch- 
wastheac-  ing  bcyoud  it,  which  was  like  a  "new 
gi*" woven  hlto  world,"    is   the   merest   sketch,   but   it 

tlie  narrative  ,  ,     •  i.       i.  j.      •    x* 

by  the  young-  sccms  to  coutain  cuough  Characteristic 
details  to  stamp  it  as  a  description  of 
North  America,  and  of  no  other  country  accessible 
by  an  Atlantic  voyage.  It  is  a  sketch  which  ap- 
parently must  have  had  its  ultimate  source  in  some- 
body's personal  experience  of  aboriginal  North 
America.  Here  we  are  reminded  that  when  the 
younger  Nicolo  published  this  narrative,  in  1558, 
some  dim  knowledge  of  the  North  American  tribes 
was  beginning  to  make  its  way  into  the  minds  of 
people  in  Europe.  The  work  of  Soto  and  Cartier, 
to  say  nothing  of  other  explorers,  had  already  been 
done.  May  we  suppose  that  Nicolo  had  thus  ob- 
tained some  idea  of  North  America,  and  wove  it 
into  his  reproduction  of  his  ancestors'  letters,  for 
the  sake  of  completeness  and  point,  in  somewhat 
*  the  same  uncritical  mood  as  that  in  which  the  most 
worthy  ancient  historians  did  not  scrujile  to  invent 
speeches  to  put  into  the  mouths  of  their  heroes? 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES.  249 

It  may  have  been  so,  and  in  hxwYi  case  the  descrip- 
tion of  Drogio  h)ses  its  point  for  us  as  a  feature 
in  the  pre-Cohimbian  voyages  to  Ameri(;a.  In 
such  case  we  may  dismiss  it  at  once,  and  j)retty 
much  all  the  latter  j)art  of  the  Zeno  narrative,  re- 
lating to  what  Antonio  heard  and  did,  becomes 
valueless ;  though  the  earlier  part,  relating  to  the 
elder  Nicolb,  still  remains  valid  and  trustworthy. 

But  suppose  we  take  the  other  alternative.  As 
in  the  earlier  part  of  the  story  we  feel  sure  that 
young  Nicolo  must  have  reproduced  the  ancestral 
documents  faithfully,  because  it  shows  luiowledge 
that  he  could  not  have  got  in  any  other  way ;  let  us 
now  suppose  that  in  the  latter  part  also  he  added 
nothing  of  himself,  but  was  simply  a 
faithful  editor.     It  will  then  follow  that  p^sent  actual 

experiences  ia 

the  Fisherman's  account  of  Drogio,  re-  j^"'"^"'  ■^™«'"- 
duced  to  writing  by  Antonio  Zeno  about 
1400,  must  probably  represent  personal  experiences 
in  North  America ;  for  no  such  happy  combination 
of  details  characteristic  only  of  North  America 
is  likely  at  that  date  to  have  been  invented  by  any 
European.  Our  simplest  course  will  be  to  sup- 
pose that  the  Fisherman  really  had  the  experiences 
which  are  narrited,  that  he  was  bandied  about 
from  tribe  to  tribe  in  North  America,  all  the  way, 
perhaps,  from  Nova  Scotia  to  Mexico,  and  yet 
returned  to  the  Faeroe  islands  to  tell  the  tale  ! 
Could  such  a  thing  be  possible?  Was  anything 
of  the  sort  ever  done  before  or  since  ? 

Yes:  something  of  the  sort  appears  to  have 
been  done  about  ten  years  after  the  Zeno  narra- 
tive was  published.     In  October,  1568,  that  great 


250  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

sailor,  Sir  John  Hawkins,  by  reason  of  scarcity  of 
food,  was  coniix'lled  to  set  about  a  liun- 

T*)lO  0AA6  of 

David  Ingram,  drcd  mcn  ashorc  near  the  Rio  de  Minas, 

1608> 

on  the  Mexican  coast,  and  leave  them  to 
their  fate.  The  continent  was  a  network  of  rude 
paths  or  trails,  as  it  had  doubtless  been  for  ages, 
and  as  central  Africa  is  to-day.  Most  of  these 
Englishmen  probably  perished  in  the  wilderness. 
Some  who  took  southwesterly  trails  found  their 
way  to  the  city  of  Mexico,  where,  as  "vile  Lu- 
theran dogges,"  they  were  treated  with  anything 
but  kindness.  Others  took  northeasterly  trails, 
and  one  of  these  men,  David  Ingram,  made  his 
way  from  Texas  to  Maine,  and  beyond  to  the  tSt. 
John's  river,  where  he  was  picked  up  by  a 
friendly  French  ship  and  carried  to  France,  and  so 
got  home  to  England.  The  journey  across  North 
America  took  him  about  eleven  months,  but  one 
of  his  comrades,  Job  Hortop,  had  no  end  of  ad- 
ventures, and  was  more  than  tvventy  years  in  get- 
ting back  to  England.  Ingram  told  such  blessed 
yarns  about  houses  of  crystal  and  silver,  and  other 
wonderfid  things,  that  many  disbelieved  his  whole 
story,  but  he  was  subjected  to  a  searching  exami- 
nation before  Sir  Francis  Walsingham,  and  as  to 
the  main  fact  of  his  journey  through  the  wilder- 
ness there  seems  to  be  no  doubt.  ^ 

^  Ingram's  narrative  •was  first  published  in  Hakluyt's  folio  of 
1589,  pp.  557-5(52,  but  in  his  larger  work.  Principal  Navigations, 
etc.,  London,  1000,  it  is  omitted.  As  Purchas  quaintly  says,  "  Aa 
for  David  Ingram's  perambulation  to  the  north  parts,  Master 
Haklnyt  in  his  first  edition  published  the  same  ;  but  it  seemeth 
some  incredibilities  of  his  reports  caused  him  to  leaue  him  out  in 
the  next  impression,  the  reward  of  lying  being  not  to  be  beleeued 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAOES.  251 

Far  more  important,  historically,  and  in  many 
ways  more  instructive  than  the  wanderings  of 
David  Ingram,  was  the  journey  of  Cabeza  de 
Vaca  and  his    ingenious    comrades,  in 

....  The  caM  of 

1528-36,    from  the    Mississippi    river  cabezade 

'  .  .  *  *       .  Vaca,  1528-38. 

to  their  friends  in  Mexico.  This  re- 
markable journey  will  receive  further  considera- 
tion in  another  place.  ^  In  the  course  of  it  Cabeza 
de  Vaca  was  for  eight  years  held  captive  by  sundry 
Indian  tribes,  and  at  last  his  escape  involved  ten 
months  of  arduous  travel.  On  one  occasion  he 
and.  his  friends  treated  some  sick  Indians,  among 
other  things  breathing  upon  tliem  and  making  the 
sign  of  the  cross.  As  the  Indians  happened  to  get 
well,  these  Spaniards  at  once  became  objects  of 
teverence,  and  different  tribes  vied  with  one  an- 
other for  access  to  them,  in  order  to  benefit  by 
their  supernatural  gifts.  In  those  early  days,  be- 
fore the  red  men  had  become  used  to  seeing  Euro- 
peans, a  white  captive  was  not  so  likely  to  be  put 
to  death  as  to  be  cherished  as  a  helper  of  vast  and 


In  truths."  Purchas  his  Pilgrimes,  London,  1625,  vol.  iv.  p.  1179. 
The  examination  before  Walsinghani  had  reference  to  the  pro- 
jected voyage  of  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  which  was  made  in  1583. 
Ingram's  relation,  "  wch  he  reported  vnto  S""  Frauncys  Walsin^  ■ 

hni.  Knight,  and  diuers  others  of  good  judgment  and  creditt,  in  |j 

/August  and  Septembar,  Ao  Dfii,  158li,"  is  in  the  British  Museum, 
Sloane  MS.  No.  1447,  fol.  1-18 ;  it  was  copied  and  privately 
printed  in  Plowden  Weston's  Documents  connected  with  the  History 
of  South  Carolina,  London,  185G.  There  is  a  MiS.  copy  in  the 
Sparks  collection  in  the  Harvard  University  library.  See  the  late 
Mr.  Charles  Deane's  note  in  his  edition  of  Hakluyt's  Discourse 
concerning  Westerne  Planting,  Cambridge,  1877,  p.  229  {Collec- 
tions of  Maine  Hist.  Soc,  2d  series,  vol.  ii.)  ;  see,  also,  Winsor, 
Narr,  and  Crit.  Hist.,  iii.  180. 
*  See  below,  vol.  ii.  p.  501. 


252  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

undetermined  value. ^  The  Indians  set  so  much 
store  by  Cabeza  de  Vaca  that  he  found  it  hard  to 
tear  himself  away;  but  at  length  he  used  his  in- 
fluence over  them  in  such  wise  as  to  facilitate  his 
moving  in  a  direction  by  which  he  ultimately  suc- 
ceeded in  escaping  to  his  friends.  There  seems  to 
be  a  real  analogy  between  his  strange  experiences 
and  those  of  the  Fisherman  in  Drogio,  who  became 
an  object  of  reverence  because  he  could  do  things 
that  the  natives  could  not  do,  yet  the  value  of 
which  they  were  able  to  appreciate. 

Now  if  the  younger  Nicolb  had  been  in  the 
mood  for  adorning  his  ancestors'  narrative  by  in- 
serting a  few  picturesque  incidents  out  of  his  own 
hearsay  knowledge  of  North  America,  it  does  not 
seem  likely  that  he  woidd  have  known  enough  to 
hit  so  deftly  upon  one  of  the  peculiarities  of  the 
barbaric  mind.  Here,  again,  we  seem  to  have 
come  upon  one  of  those  incidents,  inherently  prob- 
able, but  too  strange  to  have  been  invented,  that 
tend  to  confirm  the  story.  Without  hazarding 
anything  like  a  positive  opinion,  it  seems  to  me 
likely  enough  that  this  voyage  of  Scandinavian 
fishermen  to  the  coast  of  North  America  in  the 
fourteenth  century  may  have  happened. 

It  was  this  and  other  unrecorded  but  possible 
There  may  iustanccs  that  I  had  in  mind  at  the  be- 
feJor&n""  giuuing  of  this  chapter,  in  saying  that 
'wtsto North  occasional  visits  of  Europeans  to  Amer- 
Amenca.  ^^^  ^^  pre-Columbiau  times  may  have 
occurred  oftener  than  we  are  wont  to  suppose.    Ob- 

^  In  the  first  reception  of  the  Spaniards  in  Peru,  we  shall  860 
a  similar  idea  at  work,  vol.  ii.  pp.  398,  407. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


253 


!!; 


serve  that  our  scanty  records  —  naturally  somewhat 
perplexed  and  dim,  as  treating  of  remote  and  un- 
known places  —  refer  us  to  that  northern  Atlantic 
region  where  the  ocean  is  comparatively  narrow, 
and  to  that  northern  people  who,  from  the  time  of 
their  first  appearance  in  history,  have  been  as 
much  at  home  upon  sea  as  upon  land.  For  a 
thousand  years  past  these  hyperborean  waters  have 
been  furrowed  in  many  directions  by  stout  Scandi- 
navian keels,  and  if,  in  aiming  at  Greenland,  the 
gallant  mariners  may  now  and  then  have  hit  upon 
Labrador  or  Newfoundland,  and  have  made  flying 
visits  to  coasts  still  farther  southward,  there  is 
nothing  in  it  all  which  need  surprise  us.^ 


sea 


Nothing  can  be  clearer,  however,  from  a  survey 
of  the  whole  subject,  than  that  these  pre-Colum- 
bian voyages  were  quite  barren  of  re- 
suits  of  historic  importance.     In  point  lumbian 

,.  ^  -^  voyages  made 

of  colonization  they  produced  the  two  no  real  contrf- 

.•,,«,  ,  1/-^  11     butious  to  geo- 

lU-fated  settlements  on  the  (jrreenland  graphical 
coast,   and  nothing  more.      Otherwise 
they  made  no  real  addition  to  the  stock  of  geo- 
graphical knowledge,  they  wrought  no  effect  what- 
ever upon  the  European  mind  outside  of  Scandi- 

^  The  latest  pre-Columbian  voyage  mentioned  as  having  oc» 
cuired  in  the  northern  seas  was  that  of  the  Polish  pilot  John 
Szkolny,  who,  in  the  service  of  King  Christian  I.  of  Denmark,  is 
paid  to  have  sailed  to  Greenland  in  1476,  and  to  have  touched 
npon  the  coast  of  Labrador.  See  Gomara,  Historia  de  las  Indias, 
Baragossa,  1553,  cap.  xxxvii.  ;  Wytfliet,  Descriptionis  Ptolemaicce 
Augmentum,  Do'iay,  1603,  p.  102;  Pontanus,  Rerum  Danicarum 
Historia,  Amsterdam,  1631,  p.  703.  The  wise  Humboldt  men- 
tions the  report  without  expressing  an  opinion,  Examen  critique, 
torn.  ii.  p.  153. 


itii! 


254 


THE  DISCOVlLtiY  OF  AMERICA. 


navia,  and  even  in  Iceland  itself  the  mention  of 
coasts  beyond  Greenland  awakened  no  definite 
ideas,  and,  except  for  a  brief  season,  excited  no 
interest.  The  Zeno  narrative  indicates  that  the 
Vinland  voyages  had  practically  lapsed  from  mem- 
ory before  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century.^ 
Scholars  familiar  with  saga  literature  of  course 
knew  the  story;  it  was  just  at  this  time  that  Jon 
Thordhaison  wrote  out  the  version  of  it  which  is 
preserved  in  the  Flateyar-bok.  But  by  ^he  gen- 
eral public  it  must  have  been  forgotten,  or  else 
the  Fisherman's  tale  of  Estotiland  and  Drogio 
would  surely  have  awakened  reminiscences  of 
Markland  and  Vinland,  and  some  traces  of  this 
would  have  appeared  in  Vi^ntonio's  narrative  or 
upon  his  map.  The  principal  naval  officer  of  the 
Faeroes,  and  personal  friend  of  the  sovereign,  after 
dwelling  several  years  among  these  Northmen, 
whose  intercourse  with  their  brethren  in  Iceland 
was  frequent,  apparently  knew  nothing  of  Leif  or 
Thorfinn,  or  the  mere  iiames  of  the  coasts  which, 
they  had  visited.  Nothing  had  been  accomplished 
by  those  voyages  which  could  properly  be  called  a 
and  were  in  Contribution  to  geographical  knowledge. 
a  DUcovTry^of  To  spcak  of  them  as  constituting,  in  any 
America.  legitimate  sense  of  the  phrase,  a  Dis- 
covery of  America  is  simply  absurd.  Except  for 
Greenland,  which  was  supposed  to  be  a  part  of  the 
European  world,  America  remained  as  much  un- 
discovered after    the  eleventi.  century  as  before. 


^  Practically,  but  not  entirely,  for  we  have  seen  Markland 
mentioned  in  the  "  Elder  Skdiholt  Annals,"  about  13G2.  Seo 
above,  p.  223. 


1? 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES. 


255 


In  the  midsummer  of  1492  it  needed  to  be  discov- 
ered as  much  as  if  Leif  Ericsson  or  the  whole  race 
of  Northmen  had  never  existed. 

As  these  pre-Colmnbian  voyages  produced  no 
effect  in  the  eastern  hemisphere,  except  to  leave 
in  Icelandic  literature  a  scanty  but  interesting 
record,  so  in  the  western  hemisphere  they  seem  to 
have  produced  no  effect  beyond  cutting  down  a 
few  trees  and  killing  a  few  Indians.  In  the  out- 
lying world  of  Greenland  it  is  not  improbable  that 
the  blood  oi  the  Eskimos  may  have  received  some 
slight  Scandinavian  infusion.  But  upon  the  abo- 
riginal world  of  the  red  men,  from  Davis  strait  to 
Cape  Horn,  it  is  not  likely  that  any  impression  of 
any  sort  was  ever  made.  It  is  in  the  highest  de- 
gree probable  that  Leif  Ericsson  and  his  friends 
made  a  few  voyages  to  what  we  now  know  to  have 
been  the  coast  of  America;  but  it  is  an  abuse  of 
language  to  say  that  they  "discovered"  America. 
In  no  sense  was  any  real  contact  established  be- 
tween the  eastern  and  the  western  halves  of  our 
planet  until  the  great  voyage  of  Columbus  in 
1492. 


.'*! 


n 


I 


■,  I 


CHAPTER  m. 

EUROPE  AND   CATHAY. 

The  question  has  sometimes  been  asked,  Why 
did  the  knowledge  of  the  voyages  to  Vinland  so 
long  remain  confined  to  the  Scandinavian  people 
or  a  portion  of  them,  and  then  lapse  into  oblivion, 
insomuch  that  h  did  not  become  a  matter  of  noto- 
riety in  Europe  until  after  the  publication  of  the 
celebrated  book  of  Thormodus  Torfseus 
J^hy^thej^oy-    jj^  ;|^-^Q5  ?    ^hy  did  not  the  news  of  the 

werSV  voyages  of  Leif  and  Thorfinn  spread 
lowed  up.  rapidly  over  Europe,  like  the  news  of 
the  voyage  of  Columbus?  and  why  was  it  not 
presently  followed,  like  the  latter,  by  a  rush  of 
conquerors  and  colonizers  across  the  Atlantic? 

Such  questions  arise  from  a  failure  to  see  histor- 
ical events  in  their  true  perspective,  and  to  make 
the  proiier  allowances  for  the  manifold  differences 
in  knowledge  and  in  social  and  economic  conditions 
which  characterize  different  periods  of  history.  In 
the  present  case,  the  answer  is  to  be  found,  first, 
in  the  geographical  ignorance  which  prevented  the 
Northmen  from  realizing  in  the  smallest  degree 
what  such  voyages  really  signified  or  were  going  to 
signify  to  posti3rity ;  and,  secondly,  in  the  political 
and  commercial  condition  of  Europe  at  the  close  of 
the  tenth  century. 


»  m. 


m 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


257 


In  the  first*  place  the  route  which  the  Norse 
voyagers  pursued,  from  Iceland  to  Greenland  and 
thence  to  Vinland,  was  not  such  as  to  give  them, 
in  their  ignorance  of  the  shape  of  the  earth,  and 
with  their  imperfect  knowledge  of  latitude  and 
longitude,  any  adequate  gauge  wherewith  to  meas- 
ure their  achievement.  The  modern  ignorance  of 
reader,  who  has  in  his  mind  a  general  K«°K'»P^y« 
picture  of  the  shape  of  the  northern  Atlantic  ocean 
with  its  coasts,  must  carefully  expel  that  picture 
before  he  can  begin  to  realize  how  things  must 
have  seemed  to  the  Northmen.  None  of  the  Ice- 
landic references  to  Markland  and  Vinland  betray 
a  consciousness  that  these  countries  belong  to  a 
geographical  world  outside  of  Europe.  There  was 
not  enough  organized  geographical  knowledge  for 
that.  They  were  simply  conceived  as  remote 
places  beyond  Greenland,  inhabited  by  inferior 
but  dangerous  people.  The  accidental  finding  of 
such  places  served  neither  to  solve  any  great  com- 
mercial problem  nor  to  gratify  and  provoke  scien- 
tific curiosity.  It  was,  therefore,  not  at  all  strange 
that  it  bore  no  fruit. 

Secondly,   even    if   it   had   been  realized,    and 
could  have  been  duly  proclaimed  throughout  Eu- 
rope, that   across  the  broad  Atlantic  a  new  world 
lay  open  for  colonization,  Europe  could  not  have 
taken   advantage  of   the  fact.     Now  raid  then  a 
ship  might  make  its  way,   or  be    blown,   across 
the  waste  of  water.s  without  compass  or  L^ok  of  in- 
astrolabe ;   but  until  these  instnunents  oce^  mWgL' 
were  at  hand  anything  like  systematic  *'°"' 
ocean  navigation   was   out  of  the  question;   and 


li 


II  i^^ 


■ 
1 

i 

» 

^l 

''i' 

'  1 

y  ■  ■ 

1'  ' 

1, 

268 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


from  a  colonization  which  could  only  be^n  hy 
creeping  up  into  the  Arctic  seas  and  taking  Green- 
land on  the  way,  not  much  was  to  be  expected,  af- 
ter all. 

But  even  if  the  compass  and  other  facilities  for 
oceanic  navigation  had  been  at  hand,  the  state  of 
Europe  in  the  days  of  Eric  the  Red  was  not  such 
as  to  afford  surplus  energy  for  distant  enterprise 
of  this  sort.  Let  us  for  a  moment  recall  what  was 
going  on  in  Europe  in  the  year  of  grace  1000,  just 
enough  to  get  a  suggestive  picture  of  the  time. 
In  England  the  Danish  invader,  fork-bearded 
Swend,  father  of  the  great  Cnut,  was  wresting 
the  kingship  from  the  feeble  grasp  of  Ethelred 
Europe  in  the  ^he  Redeless.  In  Gaul  the  little  duchy 
year  1000.  q£  j^rance,  between  the  Somme  and 
the  Loire,  had  lately  become  the  kingdom  of 
France,  and  its  sovereign,  Hugh  Ca^^  °t,  had  suc- 
ceeded to  feudal  rights  of  lordship  over  the  great 
dukes  and  counts  whose  territories  surrounded 
him  on  every  side;  and  now  Hugh's  son,  Robert 
the  Debonair,  better  hymn-writer  than  warrior, 
was  waging  a  doubtful  struggle  with  these  un- 
ruly vassals.  It  was  not  yet  in  any  wise  appar- 
ent what  the  kingdoms  of  England  and  France 
were  going  to  be.  In  Germany  the  youthful  Otto 
III.,  the  "wonder  of  the  world,"  had  just  made 
his  weird  visit  to  the  tomb  of  his  mighty  pre- 
decessor at  Aachen,  before  starting  on  that  last 
journey  to  Rome  which  was  so  soon  to  cost  him 
his  life.  Otto's  teacher,  Gerbert,  most  erudite 
of  popes,  —  too  learned  not  to  have  had  deal- 
ings with  the  Devil,  —  was  beginning  to  raise  the 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


259 


I J /"ill 


papacy  out  of  the  abyss  of  infamy  into  which  the 
preceding  age  had  seen  it  sink,  and  so  to  prepare 
the  way  for  the  far-reaching  reforms  of  Hilde- 
brand.  The  boundaries  of  Christendom  were  as 
yet  narrow  and  Insecure.  With  the  overthrow  of 
Olaf  Tryggvesson  in  this  year  1000,  and  the  tem- 
porary partition  of  Norway  between  Swedes  and 
Danes,  the  work  of  Christianizing  the  North 
seemed,  for  the  moment,  to  languish.  Upon  the 
eastern  frontier  the  wild  Hungarians  had  scarcely 
ceased  to  be  a  terror  to  Europe,  and  in  this  year 
Stephen,  their  first  Christian  king,  began  to  reign. 
At  the  same  time  the  power  of  heretical  Bulgaria, 
which  had  threatened  to  overwhelm  the  Eastern 
Empire,  was  broken  down  by  the  sturdy  blows  of 
the  Macedonian  emperor  Basil.  In  this  year  the 
Christians  of  Spain  met  woful  defeat  at  the  hands 
of  Almansor,  and  there  seemed  no  reasoil  why  the 
Mussulman  rule  over  the  greater  part  of  that  pen- 
insula should  not  endure  forever. 

Thus,  from  end  to  end,  Europe  was  a  scene  of 
direst  confusion,  and  though,  as  we  now  look  back 
upon  it,  the  time  seems  by  no  means  devoid  of 
promise,  there  was  no  such  cheering  outlook  then. 
Nowhere  were  the  outlines  of  kingdoms  or  the 
ownership  of  crowns  definitely  settled.  Private 
war  was  both  incessant  and  universal ;  the  Truce 
of  God  had  not  yet  been  proclaimed.^     As  for  the 

^  The  "  Truce  of  God"  (Treuga  Dei)  was  introduced  by  the 
clergy  in  Guienne  about  10o2 ;  it  was  adopted  in  Spain  before 
lOijO,  and  in  Eng'land  by  108r>.  See  Datt,  De  pace  imperii  puhlica, 
iib.  i.  cap.  ii.  A  cessation  of  all  violent  quarrels  was  enjoined, 
under  ecclesiastical  penalties,  during  church  festivals,  and  from 
every  Wednesday  evening  until  the  following  Monday  morning. 


Iff  i 


260 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


common  people,  their  hardships  were  well  nigh 
incredible.  Amid  all  this  anarchy  and  misery,  at 
the  close  of  the  thousandth  year  from  the  birth  of 
Christ,  the  belief  was  quite  common  throughout 
Europe  that  the  Day  of  Judgment  was  at  hand  for 
a  world  grown  old  in  wickedness  and  ripe  for  its 
doom. 

It  hardly  need  be  argued  that  a  period  like  this, 
in  which  all  the  vital  energy  in  Europe  was  con-, 
sumed  in  the  adjustment  of  affairs  at  home,  was 
not  fitted  for  colonial  enterprises.  Before  a  peo- 
ple can  send  forth  colonies  it  must  have  solved  the 
problem  of  political  life  so  far  as  to  ensure  stabil- 
ity of  trade.  It  is  the  mercantile  spirit  thnt  hns 
supported  modern  colonization,  aided 
by  the  spirit  of  intellectual  curiosity 
and  the  thirst  for  romantic  adventure. 
In  the  eleventh  century  there  was  no 
intellectual  curiosity  outside  the  monastery  walls, 
nor  had  such  a  feeling  become  enlisted  in  the  ser- 
vice of  commerce.  Of  trade  there  was  indeed, 
even  in  western  Europe,  a  considerable  amount, 
but  the  commercial  marine  was  in  its  infancy,  and 
on  land  the  trader  suffered  sorely  at  the  hands  of 
the  robber  baron.  In  those  days  the  fashionable 
method  of  compounding  with  your  creditors  was, 
not  to  offer  them  fifty  cents  on  the  dollar,  but  to 
inveigle  them  into  your  castle  and  broil  them  over 
a  slow  fire~ 

In  so  far  as  the  attention  of  people  in  Euroi>e 

This  left  only  about  eighty  days  in  the  year  available  for  shooting 
and  stabbing  one's  neighbours.  The  truce  seems  to  have  accom- 
plished much  good,  though  it  was  very  imperfectly  observed. 


The  condition 
of  tilings  was 
not  such  as  to 
favour  colonial 
enterprise.     » 


f 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


261 


Was  called  to  any  quarter  of  the  globe  outside  of 
the  seething  turbulence  in  which  they  dwelt,  it  was 
directed  toward  Asia.  Until  after  1492,  Europe 
stood  with  her  back  toward  the  Atlantic.  What 
there  might  be  out  beyond  that  "  Sea  of  Darkness  " 
(Mare  Tenehrosum),  as  it  used  commonly  to  be 
called,  was  a  question  of  little  interest  and  seems 
to  have  excited  no  speculation.  In  the  view  of 
mediajval  Europe  the  inhabited  world  The  outlook 
was  cut  off  on  the  west  by  this  myste-  toward^  ""^ 
rious  ocean,  and  on  the  south  by  the  ^"** 
burning  sands  of  Sahara ;  but  eastward  it  stretched 
out  no  one  knew  how  far,  and  in  that  direction 
dwelt  tribes  and  nations  which  Europe,  from  time 
immemorial,  had  reason  to  fear.  As  early  as  the 
time  of  Herodotus,  the  secular  antagonism  be- 
tween Europe  and  Asia  had  become  a  topic  of  re- 
flection among  the  Greeks,  and  was  wrought  with 
dramatic  effect  by  that  great  wi'iter  into  the  struc- 
ture of  his  history,  culminating  in  the  grand  and 
stirring  scenes  of  the  Persian  wai.  A  century 
and  a  half  later  the  conquests  of  Alexander  the 
Great  added  a  still  more  impressive  climax  to  the 
story.  The  struggle  was  afterward  long  main- 
tained between  Roman  and  Parthian,  but  from 
the  fifth  century  after  Christ  onward  through  the 
Middle  Ages,  it  seemed  as  if  the  Oriental  world 
would  never  rest  until  it  had  inflicted  the  extrem- 
ities of  retaliation  upon  Europe.  Whether  it  was 
the  heathen  of  the  steppes  who  were  in  question, 
from  Attila  in  the  fifth  century  to  Batu  Khan  in 
the  thirteenth,  or  the  followers  of  the  Prophet, 
who  tore   away  from  Christendom  the   southern 


'1;'J 


262 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  held  Spain  in 
their  iron  grasp,  while  from  age  to  age  they  ex- 
hausted their  strength  in  vain  against  the  Eastern 
Emj)ire,  the  threatening  danger  was  always  com- 
ing with  thf^  morning  sun ;  whatever  might  be  the 
shock  that  took  the  attention  of  Europe  away  from 
herself,  it  directed  it  upon  Asia.  This  is  a  fact 
of  cardinal  importance  for  us,  inasmuch  as  it  was 
directly  through  the  interest,  more  and  more  ab- 
sorbing, which  Europe  felt  in  Asia  that  the  dis- 
covery of  the  western  hemisphere  was  at  last 
effected. 

It  was  not  only  in  war,  but  in  commerce,  that  the 
fortunes  of  Europe  were  dependent  upon  her  rela- 
tions with  Asia.  Since  prehistoric  times  there 
Routes  of  ^^^  always  been  some  commercial  in- 
K»rope*aud^°  tercoursc  between  the  eastern  shores  of 
^'"'*'  the  Mediterranean  and  the  peninsula  of 

Hindustan.  Tyre  and  Sidon  carried  on  such 
trade  by  way  of  the  Red  Sea.  ^  After  Alexander 
had  led  his  army  to  Samarcand  and  to  the  river 
llyphasis,  the  acquaintance  of  the  Greeks  with 
Asia  was  very  considerably  increased,  and  im- 
portant routes  of  trade  were  established.  One 
was  practically  the  old  Phoenician  route,  with  its 
western  terminus  moved  from  Tyre  to  Alexandria. 
Another  was  by  way  of  the  Caspian  sea,  up  the 
river  Oxus,  and  thence  with  camels  to  the  banks 
of  the  Indus.2  An  intermediate  route  was  through 
Syria  and  by  way  of  the  Euphrates  and  the  Per- 
sian gulf;  the  route  which  at  one  time  made  the 

1  Diodorus  Siculns,  i.  70. 
^  Strabo,  xi.  7,  §  3. 


EUROPE  AND  CATUAY. 


263 


greatness  of  Palmyra.  After  the  extension  of 
Roman  sway  to  the  Nile,  the  Euphrates,  and  the 
Euxine,  these  same  routes  continued  to  be  used. 
The  European  commodities  carried  to  India  were 
light  woollen  cloths,  linens,  coral,  black  lead,  va- 
rious kinds  of  glass  vessels,  and  wine.  In  ex- 
change for  these  the  traders  brought  back  to  Eu- 
rope divers  aromatic  spices,  black  pepper,  ivory, 
cotton  fabrics,  diamonds,  sapphires,  and  pearls, 
silk  thread  and  silk  stuffs. ^  Detailed  accounts  of 
these  commercial  transactions,  and  of  the  wealth 
of  personal  experiences  that  must  have  been  con- 
nected with  them,  are  excessively  scant.  Of  the 
Europeans  who,  during  all  the  centuries  between 
Alexander  and  Justinian,  made  their  way  to  Hin- 
dustan or  beyond,  we  know  very  few  by  name. 
The  amount  of  geographical  information  that  was 
gathered  during  the  first  half  of  this  period  is 
shown  in  the  map  representing  Claudius  ciaudius 
Ptolemy's  knowledge  of  the  eartli,  about  ^'"'^^y- 
the  middle  of  the  second  century  after  Christ. 
Except  for  the  Scandinavian  world,  and  some  very 
important  additions  made  to  the  knowledge  of  Atjia 
by  Marco  Polo,  this  map  fairly  represents  the  max- 
imum of  acquaintance  with  the  earth's  surface  pos- 
sessed by  Europeans  previous  to  the  great  voyages 
of  the  fifteenth  century.  It  shows  a  dim  know- 
ledge of  the  mouths  of  the  Ganges,  of  the  island  of 

^  Robertson,  Historical  Disquisition  concerning  the  Knowledgt 
which  the  Ancients  had  of  India,  Dublin,  1791,  p.  55.  I  never  have 
occasion  to  consult  Dr.  Robertson  without  being  impressed  anew 
with  his  scientific  habit  of  thought  and  the  solidity  of  his  scholar- 
ship ;  and  in  none  of  his  works  are  these  qualities  better  illus* 
trated  than  in  this  noble  essay. 


I 


i 

i 


I 


264  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

» 

Ceylon,  and  of  what  we  aoraetiraes  call  Farther  In- 
dia. A  very  dim  knowledge,  ind.  -ed ;  ior  the  huge 
peninsula  of  Hindustan  is  shrunk  into  insignifi- 
cance, while  Taprobane,  or  Ceylon,  unduly  magni- 
fied, usurps  the  place  belonging  to  the  Deccan.  At 
the  same  time  we  see  that  some  hearsay  knowledge 
of  China  had  made  its  way  into  the  Roman  world 

I  before  the  days  of  Ptolemy.     The  two  names  by 

which  China  was  first  known  to  Europeans  were 
Early  mention  "Scrcs"  or  "Scrica,"  and  "Sinae"  or 
of  China.  "Thin."  These  two  differing  names 
are  the  records  of  two  different  methods  of  ap- 
proach to  different  parts  of  a  vast  country,  very 
[  much  as  the  Northmen  called  their  part  of  eastern 

;  North  America   "Vinland,"  while  the  Spaniards 

called  their  part  "Florida."  The  name  "Seres" 
was  given  to  northwestern  China  by  traders  who 
approached  it  through  the  highlands  of  central 
Asia  from  Samarcand,  while  "Sinae"  was  the 
*-  name  given  to  southeastern  China  by  traders  who 

;  approached  it  by  way  of  the  Indian  ocean,  and 

heard  of  it  in  India,  but  never  reached  it.  Ap- 
parently no  European  ships  ever  reached  China 
before  the  Portuguese,  in  1517.^  The  name 
"Sinae"  or  "Thin"  seems  to  mean  the  country  of 
the  "Tchin"  dynasty,  which  ruled  over  the  whole 
of  China  in  the  second  century  before  Christ,  and 
^  over  a   portion   of   it  for   a  much  longer  time. 

I  The  name  "Seres,"  on  the  other  hand,  was  always 

I  associated  with  the  trade  in  silks,  and  was  known 

I 

I  1  The  Polos  sailed  back  from  China  to  the  Persian  golf  ia 

1292-94 ;  see  below,  p.  282. 


^ 


or 


»> 


I 

11 


1 
.1,' 


m^  j 


>.J^ 


CLAUDIUS   PTOLKMY'S   WORLD,   f.lR. 


>LKMV'S   WORLD.   CIR.   A..  D    150 


_L 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY.  265 

to  the  Romans  in  the  time  of  the  Emperor  Clau- 
dius,^ and  somewhat  earlier.  The  Romans  in  Vir- 
gil's time  set  a  high  value  upon  silk,  and  every 
scrap  of  it  they  had  came  from  China.  They  knew 
nothing  about  the  silk-worm,  and  supposed  that 
the  fibres  or  threads  of  this  beautiful  stuff  grew 
upon  trees.  Of  actual  intercourse  between  the 
Roman  and  Chinese  empires  there  was  no  more 
than  is  implied  in  this  current  of  trade,  passing 
through  mi.ny  hands.  But  that  each  knew,  in  a 
vague  way,  of  the  existence  of  the  other,  there  is 
no  doubt.  2 

In  the  course  of  the  reign  of  Justinian,  we  get 
references  at  first  hand  to  India,  and  coupled 
withal  to  a  general  theory  of  cosmography.  This 
curious  information  we  have  in  the  book  of  the 
monk  Cosmas  Indicopleustes,  written  cosmasindi- 
somewhere  between  a.  d.  530  and  550.  «°pi«"«t«»- 
A  pleasant  book  it  is,  after  its  kind.  In  his 
younger  days  Cosmas  had  been  n  merchant,  and  in 
divers  voyages  had  become  familiar  with  the  coasts 
of  Ethiopia  and  the  Persian  gulf,  and  had  visited 
India  and  Ceylon.  After  becoming  a  monk  at 
Alexandria,  Cosmas  wrote  his  book  of  Christian 

^  The  nams  "Seres"  appears  on  the  map  of  Pomponius  Mela 
(oir.  A.  D.  50),  while  "  Sinse  "  does  not.     See  below,  p.  304. 

Jam  Tartes^siaco  quos  solverat  (cqnore  Titan 
In  nocteiu  diffusua  equos,  jungebat  Eolia 
LittoribuB,  pritnique  novo  Pliaethonte  retecti 
Seres  lanigeris  repetebaiit  vellera  lucis. 

Silius  ItalicuB,  lib.  vi.  ad  init. 

'  For  this  whole  subject  see  Colonel  Sir  Henry  Yule's  Cathay 
and  the  Way  Thither,  London,  1866,  2  vols.,  —  a  work  of  profound 
learning  and  more  delightful  than  a  novel. 


266  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

geography,^  maintaining,  in  opposition  to  Ptolemy, 
that  the  earth  is  not  a  sphere,  but  a  rectangular 
plane  forming  the  floor  of  the  universe ;  the  heav- 
ens rise  on  all  four  sides  about  this  rectangle,  like 
the  four  walls  of  a  room,  and,  at  an  indefinite 
height  above  the  floor,  these  blue  walls  support  a 
Shape  of  the  Vaulted  roof  or  firmament,  in  which 
?ng*to  ccTs^"^  '  God  dwells  with  the  angels.  In  the 
*°*"'  centre   of    the   floor  are  the  inhabited 

lands  of  the  earth,  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  a 
great  ocean,  beyond  which,  somewhere  out  in  a 
corner,  is  the  Paradise  from  which  Adam  and 
Eve  were  expelled.  In  its  general  sha].)e,  there- 
fore, the  universe  somewhat  resembles  the  Taber- 
tiacle  in  the  Wilderness,  or  a  modern  "Saratoga 

^  Its  title  13  XpiffTiavui/  $ip\os,  ip/iriveta  fls  tV  OKrdrevxoVf 
i.  e.  against  Ptolemy's  Geograpliy  in  eight  books.  The  name 
Gosmas  Indicopleiistes  seems  merely  to  mean  "  the  cosmographer 
•who  has  sailed  to  India. "  P  j  begins  his  book  in  a  tone  of  extreme 
and  somewhat  unsavory  humility :  'Avotyw  tA  fxoyi\d\a  Koi  $pa56- 
yKwaaa  X^^^V  ^  afiapTwKhs  Kal  Td\as  iyd  —  "  I,  the  sinner  and 
■wretch,  open  my  stammering,  stuttering  lips,"  etc.  — The  book 
has  been  the  occasion  of  some  injudicious  excitement  within  the 
last  half  century.  Cosmas  gave  a  description  of  some  compara- 
tively recent  inscriptions  on  the  peninsula  of  Sinai,  and  because 
he  could  not  find  anybody  able  to  read  them,  he  inferred  that  they 
must  be  records  of  the  Israelites  on  their  passage  through  the 
desert.  (Compare  the  Dighton  rock,  above,  p.  214.)  Whether 
in  the  sixth  century  of  grace  or  in  the  nineteenth,  your  unre- 
generate  and  uncha.stened  antiquary  snaps  at  conclusions  as  a 
drowsy  dog  does  at  flies  Some  years  ago  an  English  clergyman, 
Charles  Forster,  started  up  the  nonsense  again,  and  argued  that 
these  inscriptions  might  afford  a  clue  to  man's  primeval  speech! 
Cf.  Bnnsen,  Christianity  and  Mankind,  vol.  iii.  p.  231 ;  Miillerand 
Donaldson,  History  of  Greek  Literature,  vol.  iii.  p.  35,*} ;  Bury,  His' 
tory  of  the  Later  Roman  Empire  from  Arcadius  to  Irene,  vol.  ii.  ph 
177. 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


267 


trunk."  On  the  northern  part  of  the  floor,  under 
the  firmament,  is  a  lofty  conical  mountain,  around 
which  the  sun,  moon,  and  planets  perform  their 
daily  revolutions.  In  the  simuner  the  sun  takes  a 
turn  around  the  apex  of  the  cone,  and  is,  therefore, 
hidden  only  for  a  short  night;  but  in  the  winter 
he  travels  around  the  base,  which  takes  longer, 
and,  accordingly,  the  nights  are  long.  Such  is  the 
doctrine  drawn  from  Holy  Scripture,  says  Cos- 
mas,  and  as  for  the  vain  blasphemers  who  pretend 
that  the  earth  is  a  round  ball,  the  Lord  hath  stul- 
tified them  for  their  sins  until  they  impudently 
prate  of  Antipodes,  where  trees  grow  downward 
and  rain  falls  upward.  As  for  such  nonsense,  the 
worthy  Cosmas  cannot  abide  it. 

I  cite  these  views  of  Cosmas  because  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  they  represent  beliefs  current 
among  the  general  public  until  after  the  time  of 
Columbus,^  in  spite  of  the  deference  paid  to  Ptol- 

^  Such  views  have  thoir  advocates  even  now.  There  still  lives,  I 
believe,  in  England,  a  certain  John  Hampden,  who  with  dauntless 
breast  maintains  that  the  earth  is  a  circular  plane  with  centre  at 
the  north  pole  and  a  circumference  of  nearly  30,000  miles  where 
poor  misguided  astronomers  suppose  the  south  pole  to  be.  The 
Bun  moves  across  the  sky  at  a  distance  of  about  800  miles.  From 
the  boundless  abyss  beyond  the  southern  circumference,  with  its 
barrier  of  icy  mountains,  came  the  waters  which  drowned  the 
antediluvian  world  ;  for,  as  this  author  quite  reasonably  observes, 
"  on  a  globular  earth  such  a  deluge  would  have  been  physically 
Impossible. "  Hampden's  title  is  somewhat  like  that  of  Cosmas,  — 
The  New  Manual  of  Biblical  Cosmography,  London,  1877  ;  and 
he  began  in  1876  to  publish  a  periodical  called  The  Truth-Seeker^  s 
Oracle  and  Scriptural  Science  Revieu^.  Similar  views  have  been  set 
forth  by  one  Samuel  Rowbotham,  imder  the  pseudonym  of  "  Par- 
allax," Zetetic  Astronomy.  Earth  not  a  Globe,  An  experimental 
inquiry  into  the  true  figure  of  the  earth,  proving  it  a  plane  without 
orbital  or  axial  motion,  etc.,  London,   1873 ;  and  by  a  William 


m 


268  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

emy's  views  by  the  learned.  Along  with  these 
cosmographical  speculations,  Cosmas  shows  a  wider 
geographical  knowledge  of  Asia  than  any  earlier 
writer.  He  gives  a  good  deal  of  interesting  in- 
formation about  India  and  Ceylon,  and  has  a 
fairly  correct  idea  of  the  position  of  China,  which 
he  calls  Tzinista  or  Chinistan.  This  land  of  silk 
is  the  remotest  of  aU  the  Indies,  and  beyond  it 
"  there  is  neither  navigation  nor  inhabited  country. 
.  .  .  And  the  Indian  philosophers,  called  Brach- 
mans,  tell  you  that  if  you  were  to  stretch  a 
straight  cord  from  Tzinista  through  Persia  to  the 
Roman  territory,  you  would  just  divide  the  world 
in  halves.     And  mayhap  they  are  right."  ^ 

In  the  fourth  and  following  centuries,  Nestorian 
missionaries  were  very  active  in  Asia,  and  not 
The  only  made  multitudes  of  converts  and 

Neetorians.  established  metropolitan  sees  in  such 
places  as  Kashgar  and  Herat,  but  even  found  their 

Carpenter,  One  Hundred  Proofs  that  the  Earth  is  not  a  Globe, 
Baltimore,  1885.  There  ia  a  very  considerable  quantity  of  such 
literature  afloat,  the  product  of  a  kind  of  mental  aberration  that 
thrives  upon  paradox.  When  I  was  superintendent  of  the  catalogue 
of  Harvard  University  library,  I  made  the  class  "  Eccentric  Liter- 
ature "  under  which  to  group  such  books,  —  the  lucubrations  of 
circle-squarers,  angle-trisectors,  inventors  of  perpetual  motion, 
devisers  of  recipes  for  living  forever  without  dying,  crazy  inter- 
preters of  Daniel  and  the  Apocalypse,  upsetters  of  the  uridulaiory 
theory  of  light,  the  Bacon-Shakespeare  lunatics,  etc. ;  a  dismal 
procession  of  long-eared  bipeds,  with  very  raucous  bray.  The  late 
Professor  De  Morgan  devoted  a  bulky  and  instructive  volume  to 
an  account  of  such  people  and  their  crotchets.  See  his  Budget  oj 
Paradoxes,  London,  1872. 

^  Cosmas,  ii.  138.  Further  mention  of  China  was  made  early 
in  the  seventh  century  by  Theophylactus  Samocatta,  vii.  7.  See 
S'ule's  Cathay,  vol.  i.  pp.  zliz.,  clzviiL 


ill 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


269 


way  into  China.  Their  work  forms  an  interesting 
though  melancholy  chapter  in  history,  but  it  does 
not  seem  to  have  done  much  toward  making  Asia 
better  known  to  Europe.  As  declared  heretics, 
the  Nestorians  were  themselves  almost  entirely  cut 
off  from  intercourse  with  European  Christians. 

The  immediate  effect  of  the  sudden  rise  of  the 
vast  Saracen  empire,  in  the  seventh  and  eighth 
centuries,  was  to  interpose  a  barrier  to  the  exten- 
bion  of  intercourse  between  Europe  and  the  Far 
Eitst.     Trade  between  the  eastern  and 

.  Effects  of  the 

"western  extremities   of   Asia  went   on  saracen 

1     .  1  -I  .  /.         conquests. 

more  briskly  than  ever,  but  it  was  for 
a  long  time  exclusively  in  Mussulman  hands. 
The  mediaeval  Arabs  were  bold  sailors,  and  not 
only  visited  Sumatra  and  Java,  but  made  their  way 
to  Canton.  Upon  the  southern  and  middle  routes 
the  Arab  cities  of  Cairo  and  Bagdad  became  thriv- 
ing centres  of  trade ;  but  as  Spain  and  the  whole 
of  noi-thern  Africa  were  now  Arab  countries,  most 
of  the  trade  between  east  and  west  was  conducted 
within  Mussulman  boundaries.  Saracen  cruisers 
prowled  in  the  Mediterranean  and  sorely  har- 
assed the  Christian  coasts.  During  the  eighth, 
ninth,  and  tentli  centuries,  Europe  was  more  shut 
in  upon  herself  than  ever  before  or  since.  In 
many  respects  these  were  especially  the  dark  ages 
of  Europe,  —  the  period  of  least  comfort  and 
least  enlightenment  since  the  days  of  pre-Roman 
barbarism.  But  from  this  general  statement  Con- 
stantinople shoidd  be  in  great  measure  excepted. 
The  current  of  mediseval  trade  through  the  noble 
highway  of  the  Dardanelles  and  the     'osphorus 


270  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

was  subject  to  fluctuations,  but  it  was  always 
great.  The  city  of  the  Byzantine  emperors  was 
before  all  things  a  commercial  city,  like  Venice  in 
later  days.  Until  the  time  of  the  Crusades  Con- 
stantinople was  the  centre  of  the  Levant  trade. 
Constantino.  "^^^  great  northern  route  from  Asia 
pie  in  the        remained  available  for  commercial  inter- 

twelfth  cen- 

*^^y-  course  in  this  direction.     Persian  and 

Armenian  merchants  sent  their  goods  to  Batoiun, 
whence  they  were  shipped  to  Constantinople ;  and 
silk  was  brought  from  northwestern  China  by  car- 
avan to  the  Oxus,  and  forwarded  thence  by  the 
Caspian  sea,  the  rivers  Cyrus  and  Phasis,  and  the 
Euxine  sea.^  When  it  was  visited  by  Benjamin 
of  Tudela  in  the  twelfth  century,  Constantinople 
was  undoubtedly  the  richest  and  most  magnificent 
city,  and  the  seat  of  the  highest  civilization,  to  be 
found  anywhere  upon  the  globe. 

In  the  days  of  its  strength  the  Eastern  Empire 
was  the  staunch  bulwark  of  Christendom  against 
the  dangerous  assaults  of  Persian,  Saracen,  and 
Turk;  alike  in  prosperity  and  in  calamity,  it 
proved  to  be  the  teacher  and  civilizer  of  the  west- 
ern world.  The  events  which,  at  the  close  of  the 
eleventh  century,  brought  thousands  upon  thou- 
sands of  adventurous,  keen-witted  people  from 
western  Europe  into  this  home  of  wealth 
and  refinement,  were  the  occasion  of 
the  most  remarkable  intellectual  awakening  that 
the  world  had  ever  witnessed  up  to  that  time.  The 
Crusades,  in  their  beginning,  were  a  symptom  of 

^  Robertson,  Historical   Disquisition,  p.  93;  Pears,  The  Fall 
ff  Constantinople.,  p.  177,  — a  book  of  great  merit. 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


271 


the  growing  energy  of  western  Europe  under  the 
ecclesiastical  reformation  effected  by  the  mighty 
Hildebrand.  They  were  the  military  response  of 
Europe  to  the  most  threatening,  and,  as  time  has 
proved,  the  most  deadly  of  all  the  blows  that  have 
ever  been  aimed  at  her  from  Asia.  Down  to  this 
time  the  Mahometanism  with  which  Christendom 
had  so  long  been  in  conflict  was  a  Mahometanism 
of  civilized  peoples.  The  Aiabs  and  Moors  were 
industrious  merchants,  agriculturists,  and  crafts- 
men ;  in  their  society  one  might  meet  with  learned 
scholars,  refined  poets,  and  profound  philosophers. 
But  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  century,  Islam  hap- 
pened to  make  converts  of  the  Turks,  a  nomad 
race  in  the  upper  status  of  barbarism,  with  flocks 
and  herds  and  patriarchal  families.  Inspired  with 
the  sudden  zeal  for  conquest  which  has  always 
<;haracterized  new  converts  to  Islam,  the  Turks 
i)egan  to  pour  down  from  the  plains  of  central 
Asia  like  a  deluge  upon  the  Eastern  Empire.  In 
1016  they  overwhelmed  Armenia,  and  presently 
advanced  into  Asia  Minor.  Their  mode  of  con- 
quest was  peculiarly  baleful,  for  at  first  Barbarizing 
they  deliberately  annihilated  the  works  Turw^'^  '^ 
of  civilization  in  order  to  prepare  the  conquest, 
country  for  their  nomadic  life ;  they  puUed  down 
cities  to  put  up  tents.  Though  they  long  ago 
ceased  to  be  nomads,  they  have  to  this  day  never 
learned  to  comprehend  civilized  life,  and  they  have 
been  simply  a  blight  upon  every  part  of  the  earth's 
surface  which  they  have  touched.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  the  eleventh  century,  Asia  Minor  was  one 
of  the  most  prosperous  and  highly  civilized  parts  of 


i  j 


';%  III 

'  '4  r 


272  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

the  world ;  ^  and  the  tale  of  its  devastation  by 
the  terrible  Alp  Arslan  and  the  robber  chiefs 
that  came  after  him  is  one  of  the  most  mourn- 
fid  chapters  in  history.  At  the  end  of  that  cen- 
tury, when  the  Turks  were  holding  Nicaea  and 
actually  had  their  outposts  on  the  Marmora,  it  was 
high  time  for  Christendom  to  rise  en  masse  in  self- 
defence.  The  idea  was  worthy  of  the  greatest  of 
popes.  Imperfectly  and  spasmodically  as  it  was 
carried  out,  it  undoubtedly  did  more  than  any- 
thing that  had  ever  gone  before  toward  strength- 
ening tli-j  wholesome  sentiment  of  a  common 
Christendom  among  the  peoples  of  western  Europe. 
The  Crusades  increased  the  power  of 
fecta  of  the      the  Church,  which   was   equivalent  to 

Crusades.  .  ,  .    .  « 

puttmg  a  curb  upon  the  propensities  of 
the  robber  baron  and  making  labour  and  traffic 
more  secure.  In  another  way  they  aided  this  good 
work  by  carrying  off  the  robber  baron  in  large 
numbers  to  Egypt  and  Syria,  and  killing  him 
there.  In  this  way  they  did  much  toward  rid- 
ding European  society  of  its  most  turbulent  ele- 
ments; while  at  the  same  time  they  gave  fresh 
development  to  the  spirit  of  romantic  adventure, 
and  connected  it  with  something  better  than  va- 
grant freebooting.2      By  renewing  the  long-sus- 

^  "It  is  difBcuIt  for  the  modem  traveller  who  Tentures  into 
the  heart  of  Asia  Minor,  and  finds  nothing  but  mde  Kurds  and 
Turkish  peasants  living  among  mountains  and  wild  pastures,  not 
connected  even  by  ordinary  roads,  to  imagine  the  splendour  and 
rich  cultivation  of  this  vast  country,  with  its  brilliant  cities  and 
its  teeming  population."  Mahaffy,  The  Greek  World  under  Eo- 
vian  Sway,  London,  185K),  p.  229. 

^  The  general  effects  of  the  Crusades  are  discussed,  with  much 
learning  and  sagacity,  by  Choiseul-Daillecourt,  De  Vlnjluence  des 
Croisades  sur  Vital  despeuples  de  V Europe,  Paris,  1809. 


FUROPE  AND  CATHAY.  273 

pended  intercourse  between  the  minds  of  western 
Europe  and  the  Greek  culture  of  Constantinople, 
they  served  as  a  mighty  stimulus  to  intellectual 
curiosity,  and  had  a  large  share  in  bringing  about 
that  great  thirteenth  century  renaissance  which  is 
forever  associated  with  the  names  of  Giotto  and 
Dante  and  Roger  Bacon. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  these  ways  the 
Crusades  were  for  our  forefathers  in  Europe  the 
most  bracing  and  stimulating  events  that  occurred 
in  the  whole  millennium  between  the  complicated 
disorders  of  the  fifth  century  and  the  outburst  of 
maritime  discovery  in  the  fifteenth.  How  far  they 
justified  themselves  from  the  military  point  of 
view,  it  is  not  so  easy  to  say.  On  the  one  hand, 
they  had  much  to  do  with  retarding  the  progress 
of  the  enemy  for  two  hundred  years;  they  over- 
whelmed the  Seljukian  Turks  so  effectually  that 
their  successors,  the  Ottomans,  did  not  become 
formidable  until  about  1300,  after  the  last  crusad- 
ing wave  had  spent  its  force.  On  the  other  hand, 
■  the  Fov;irth  Crusade,  with  better  oppor-  The  Fourth 
tunities  than  any  of  the  others  for  strik-  "*  *' 
ing  a  crushing  blow  at  the  Moslem,  played  false 
to  Christendom,  and  ir  1204  captured  and  de- 
spoiled Constantinople  in  order  to  gratify  Venice's 
hatred  of  her  commercial  rival  and  superior.  It 
was  a  sorry  piece  of  business,  and  one  cannot  look 
with  unmixed  pleasure  at  the  four  superb  horses 
that  now  adorn  the  front  of  the  church  of  St.  Mark 
as  a  trophy  of  this  unhallowed  exploit.^     One  can- 

^  They  were  taken  from  Chios  in  the  fourth  century  by  the 
emperor  Theodosiiu,  and  placed  in  the  hippodrome  at  Constanti- 


274 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


not  help  feeling  that  but  for  this  colossal  treachery, 
the  great  city  of  Constantine,  to  which  our  own 
civilization  owes  more  than  can  ever  be  adequately 
told,  might,  perhaps,  have  retained  enough  strength 
to  withstand  the  barbarian  in  1453,  and  thus  have 
averted  one  of  the  most  lamentable  catastrophes  in 
the  history  of  mankind. 

The  general  effect  of  the  Crusades  upon  Orien- 
tal commerce  was  to  increase  the  amount  of  traffic 
through  Egypt  and  Syria.  Of  this  lucrative  trade 
Venice  got  the  lion's  share,  and  while  she  helpied 
support  the  short-lived  Latin  dynnsty  upon  the 
throne  at  Constantinople,  she  monopolized  a  great 
part  of  the  business  of  the  Black  Sea  also.  But 
in   1261    Venice's   rival,   Genoa,   allied 

Rivalry  be-  1 1.         •  i        i         r-i         i 

twe«n  Venice  hcrsclt    With   the   (jrreek   emperor,    Mi- 

aud  Qeuoa.  i    -r*   i       i  xt»  i 

chael  Palaeologus,  at  Nicaea,  placed  him 
upon  the  Byzantine  throne,  and  again  cut  off 
Venice  from  the  trade  that  came  through  the 
Bosphorus.  From  this  time  forth  the  mutual 
hatred  between  Venice  and  Genoa  "  waxed  fiercer 
than  ever ;  no  merchant  fleet  of  either  state  could 
go  to  sea  without  convoy,  and  wherever  their 
ships  met  they  fought.     It  was  something  like  .the 

nople,  whence  they  were  taken  by  the  Venetians  in  1204.  The 
opinion  that  "  the  results  of  tlie  Fourth  Crusade  upon  Europeau 
civilization  were  altogether  disastrous"  is  ably  set  forth  by  Mr, 
Pears,  The  Fall  of  Constantinojile,  London,  1885,  and  would  be 
difficult  to  refute.  Voltaire  might  well  say  in  this  case,  "Ainai 
le  seal  fruit  des  chr^tiens  dans  leurs  oarbares  croisatles  fut  d'ex- 
terininer  d'autres  chr^tiens.  Ces  crois^s,  qui  ruinaient  I'empire^ 
auraient  pu,  bien  plus  aisdment  que  tons  leurs  pr^decesseurs, 
chiisser  les  Turcs  de  I'Asie."  Fssai  sur  les  Masurs,  torn.  ii.  p. 
158.  Voltaire's  general  view  of  the  Crusades  is,  however^  very 
Buperfieiui. 


'y-m 


EUROPE  AND  C ATI! AT.  276 

state  of  thinj^s  between  Spain  and  Enp^land  in  the 
days  of  Drake."  ^  In  the  one  case  as  in  the  other, 
it  was  a  strife  for  the  mastery  of  ^he  sea  and  its 
commerce.  Genoa  obtained  full  control  of  the 
Euxine,  took  possession  of  the  Crimea,  and  thus 
acquired  a  monopoly  of  the  trade  from  central 
Asia  along  the  northern  route.  With  the  fall  of 
Acre  in  1291,  and  the  consequent  expulsion  of 
Christians  from  Syria,  Venice  lost  her  hold  upon 
the  middle  route.  But  with  the  pope's  leave  ^ 
she  succeeded  in  making  a  series  of  advantageous 
commercial  treaties  with  the  new  Mameluke  sover- 
eigns of  Egj^t,  and  the  dealings  between  the  Red 
Sea  and  the  Adriatic  soon  came  to  be  prodigious. 
The  Venetians  gained  control  of  part  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus, with  many  islands  of  the  ^geim  and 
eastern  Mediterranean.  During  the  fourteenth 
and  fifteenth  centuries  their  city  was  the  most 
splendid  and  luxurious  in  all  Christendom. 

Such  a  development  of  wealth  in  Venice  and 
Genoa  implies  a  large  producing  and  consuming 
area  behind  them,  able  to  take  and  pay  for  the 
costly  products  of  India  and  China.     Before  the 
end  of  the  thirteenth  century  the  volume  of  Euro- 
pean trade  had  swelled  to  great  proper-  centres  and 
tions.     How  fuU  of  historic  and  liter-  Zy^"^""" 
ary  interest  are  the  very  names  of  the  *'^*^*' 
centres  and  leading  routes  of  this  trade  as  it  was 
established  in  those  days,  with  its  outlook  upon  the 

1  Yule's  Marco  Polo,  vol.  i.  p.  Ixxi. 

2  A  papal  dispensation  was  necessary  before  a  commercial 
treaty  could  be  made  with  Mahometans.  See  Leibuitz,  Codex 
Jitr.  Gent.  Diplomat.,  L  489. 


276  THE  DISCOVEfiY  OF  AMERICA. 

Mediterranean  and  the  distant  East !  Far  up  in 
the  North  we  see  Wisby,  on  the  little  isle  of  Goth- 
land in  the  Baltic,  giving  its  name  to  new  rales 
of  international  law;  and  the  merchants  of  the 
famous  Hansa  towns  extending  their  operations  as 
far  as  Novgorod  in  one  direction,  and  in  another 
to  the  Steelyard  in  London,  where  the  pound  of 
these  honest  "  Easterlings "  was  adopted  as  the 
"sterling"  unit  of  sound  r.ioney.  Fats  and  tal- 
lows, furs  and  wax  from  Russia,  iron  and  copper 
from  Sweden,  strong  hides  and  unrivalled  wools 
from  England,  salt  cod  and  herring  (much  needed 
on  meagre  church  fast-days)  from  the  North  and 
Baltic  seas,  appropriately  followed  by  generous 
casks  of  beer  from  Hamburg,  were  sent  southward 
in  exchange  for  fine  cloths  and  tapestries,  the 
products  of  the  loom  in  Ghent  and  Bruges,  in  Ulm 
and  Augsburg,  with  delicious  vintages  of  the 
lihine,  supple  chain  armour  from  Milan,  Austrian 
yew -wood  for  English  long-bows,  ivory  and  spices, 
pearls  and  silks  from  Italy  and  the  Orient.  Along 
the  routes  from  Venice  and  Florence  to  Antwerp 
and  Rotterdam  we  see  the  progress  in  wealth  and 
refinement,  in  artistic  anrl  literary  productiveness. 
AVe  see  the  early  schools  of  music  and  painting  in 
Italy  meet  with  prompt  respc  rise  in  Flanders ;  in 
the  many-gabled  streets  of  Nuremberg  we  hear 
the  voice  of  the  Meistersinger,  and  under  the  low 
oaken  roof  of  a  Canterbury  inn  we  listen  to  joy- 
ous if  sometimes  naughty  tales  erst  told  in  pleas- 
ant groves  outside  of  fever-stricken  Florence. 

V"  ith  this  increase  of  wealth  and  (culture  in  cen- 
tral Tiurope  there  came  a  considerable  extension  of 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


277 


Irhowledge  and  a  powerful  stimulus  to  curiosity 
concerning  the  remote  parts  of  Asia.  The  con- 
quering career  of  Jenghis  Khan  (1206-1227)  had 
shaken  the  world  to  its  foundations.  In  the  mid- 
dle of  that  century,  to  adopt  Colonel  Yule's  lively 
(  ipression,  "throughout  Asia  and  eastern  Europe, 
scarcely  a  dog  might  bark  without  Mon- 

■i-i  n  Jill  /"Tjii     Effects  of  tho 

goi  leave,  irom  the  borders  oi  r^oland  Mongol  con- 
and  the  coast  of  Cilicia  to  the  Amur 
and  the  Yellow  Sea."  About  these  portentous 
Mongols,  who  had  thus  in  a  twinkling  over- 
whelmed China  and  Russia,  and  destroyed  the 
Caliphate  of  Bagdad,  there  was  a  refreshing  touch 
of  open-minded  heathenism.  They  were  barba- 
rians willing  to  learn.  From  end  to  end  of  Asia 
the  barriers  were  thrown  down.  It  was  a  time 
when  Alan  chiefs  from  the  Volga  served  as  po- 
lice in  Tunking,  and  Chinese  physicians  could  be 
consulted  at  Tabriz.  For  about  a  hundred  years 
China  was  more  accessible  than  at  any  period  be- 
fore or  since,  —  more  even  than  to-day ;  and  that 
country  now  for  the  first  time  became  really  known 
to  a  few  Europeans.  In  the  northern  provinces 
of  China,  shortly  before  the  Mongol  deluge,  there 
had  reigned  a  dynasty  known  as  the  Khitai^  and 
hence  China  was  (and  still  is)  commonly  .-spoken 
of  in  central  Asia  as  the  country  of  the  Khitai. 
When  this  name  reached  European  ears  it  became 
Cathay^  the  name  by  which  China  was 
best  known  in  Europe  during  the  next 
four  centuries.^  In  1245,  Friar  John  of  Piano 
Carpini,  a  friend  and  disciple  of  St.  Francis,  was 

^  Yule's  Cathay,  vol.  i.  p.  cxvi.  ;  Marco  Polo,  vol.  i.  p.  xlii. 


278 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


sent  by  Pope  Innocent  IV.  on  a  missionary  er- 
carpiniand  r^nd  to  the  Great  Khan,  and  visited 
Rubruquis.       j^jj^  |j^  j^jg  camp  at  Karakorum  in  the 

very  depths  of  Mongolia.  In  1253  the  king  of 
France,  St.  Louis,  sent  another  Franciscan  monk, 
Willem  de  Rubruquis,  to  Karal'corimi,  on  a  mis- 
sion of  which  the  purpose  is  now  not  clearly  un- 
derstood. Both  these  Franciscans  were  men  of 
shrewd  and  cultivated  minds,  especially  Rubruquis, 
whose  narrative,  "in  its  rich  detail,  its  vivid  pic- 
tures, its  acuteness  of  observation  and  strong  good 
sense  .  .  .  has  few  superiors  in  the  whole  library 
of  travel."^  Neither  Rubruquis  nor  Friar  John 
visited  China,  but  they  fell  in  with  Chinese  folk 
at  Karakorum,  and  obtained  information  concern- 
ing the  geography  of  eastern  Asia  far  more  definite 
>han  had  ever  before  been  possessed  by  Euro- 
jeans.  They  both  describe  Cathay  as  bordering 
upon  an  eastern  ocean,  and  this  piece 
of  information  constituted  the  llrst  im- 
portant leap  of  geographical  know- 
ledge to  the  eastward  since  the  days  of 
Ptolemy,  who  supposed  that  beyond  the  "Seres 
and  Sinse"  lay  an  unknown  land  of  vast  extent, 
"full  of  reedy  and  impenetrable  swamps." ^    The 


First  know- 
ledce  of  an 
eastern  ocean 
beyond  Ca- 
thay. 


1  Yule's  Marco  Polo,  vol.  i.  p.  cxxx. ;  cf.  Humboldt,  Examen 
critique,  torn.  i.  p.  71.  The  complete  original  texts  of  the  re- 
ports of  both  monks,  with  learned  notes,  may  be  found  in  the 
Recueil  de  Voyages  et  de  Memoires,  publie  par  la  SocitU  de  Geo- 
graphies Paris,  1839,  tom.  iv. ,  viz.  :  Johannis  de  Piano  Carjnni  His' 
toria  Mongolorum  quos  nox  Tartaros  appellamus,  ed.  M.  d'Avezac; 
Itinerarium  Wilklmi  de  Kubrulc,  ed.  F.  Michel  et  T.  Wright. 

2  Yule's  Cathay,  vol.  i.  p.  xxxix. ;  Ptolemy,  i.  17.  Cf.  Bunbu- 
ry's  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  London,  1883,  vol.  ii.  p.  606. 


^"im 


w 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


279 


information  gathered  by  Rut  ruquis  and  Friar  John 
indicated  that  there  was  an  end  to  the  continent 
of  Asia;  that,  not  as  a  matter  of  vague  specula- 
tion, but  of  positive  knowledge,  Asia  was  bounded 
on  the  east,  just  as  Europe  was  bounded  on  the 
west,  by  an  ocean. 

Here  we  arrive  at  a  notable  landmark  in  the 
history  of  the  Discovery  of  America.  Here  from 
the  camp  of  bustling  heathen  at  Karakormn  there 
is  brought  to  Europe  the  first  announcement  of  a 
geographical  fact  from  which  the  poetic  mind  of 
Christopher    Columbus   will    hereafter 

„  .      .  The  dataware 

reap  a  wonderful  harvest.  This  is  one  ">"»  prepared 
among  many  instances  of  the  way  in 
which,  throughout  aU  departments  of  human 
thought  and  action,  the  glorious  thirteenth  cen- 
tury was  beginning  to  give  shape  to  the  problems 
of  wliich  the  happy  solution  has  since  made  the 
modern  world  so  different  from  the  ancient.^ 
Since  there  is  an  ocean  east  of  Cathay  and  an 
ocean  west  of  Spain,  how  natural  the  inference  — 
and  albeit  quite  wrong,  how  amazingly  fruitful  — 
that  these  oceans  are  one  and  the  same,  so  that 
by  sailing  westward  from  Spain  one  might  go 
straight  to  Cathay  1  The  data  for  such  an  in- 
ference were  now  all  at  hand,  but  it  but  as  yet  no- 
does  not  appear  that  any  one  as  yet  rea-  ^°^^^  tue^"*^ 
soned  from  the  data  to  the  conclusion,  Sconciu**" 
although  we  find  Roger  Bacon,  in  1267,  ^'°°" 
citing  the  opinions  of  Aristotle  and  other  ancient 

^  See  my  Beginnings  of  New  England,  chap.  i.  How  richly 
Biiggestive  to  an  American  is  the  contemporaneity  of  Rubruquis 
and  Earl  Simon  of  Leicester! 


280  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

writers  to  the  effect  that  the  distance  by  sea  from 
the  western  shores  of  Spain  to  the  eastern  shores 
of  Asia  cannot  be  so  very  great.  ^  In  those  days 
it  took  a  long  time  for  such  ideas  to  get  from  the 
heads  of  philosophers  into  the  heads  of  men  of  ac- 
tion; and  in  the  thirteenth  century,  when  Cathay 
was  more  accessible  b}  land  than  at  any  time  be- 
fore or  since,  there  was  no  practical  necessity  felt 
for  a  water  route  thither.  Europe  still  turned  her 
back  upon  the  Atlantic  and  gazed  more  intently 
than  ever  upon  Asia.  Stronger  and  more  general 
grew  the  interest  in  Cathay. 

In  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  some 
The  Polo  members  of  the  Polo  family,  one  of  the 
brothers.  aristocratic  families  of  Venice,  had  a 
commercial  house  at  Constantinople.  Thence,  in 
1260,  the  brothers  Nicolb  and  Maffeo  Polo  started 
on  a  trading  journey  to  the  Crimea,  whence  one 
opportimity  after  another  for  making  money  and 
gratifying  their  curiosity  with  new  sights  led  them 
northward  and  eastward  to  the  Volga,  thence  irto 
Bokhara,  and  so  on  until  they  reached  the  court  of 
the  Great  Khan,  in  one  of  the  northwestern  prov- 
inces of  Cathay.  The  reigning  sovereign  was  the 
famous  Kublai  Khan,  grandson  of  the  all-conquer- 
ing Jenghis.  Kublai  was  an  able  and  benevolent 
despot,  earnest  in  the  wish  to  improve  the  condi- 
tion of  his  Mongol  kinsmen.  He  had  never  before 
met  European  gentlemen,  and  was  charmed  with 
the  cultivated  and  polished  Venetians.  He  seemed 
quite  ready  to  enlist  the  Roman  Church  in  aid  of 
his  civilizing  schemes,  and  entrusted  the  Polos  with 

^  Roger  Bacon,  Opus  Majus,  ed.  Jebb,  London,  1733,  p.  183« 


i 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY.  281 

a  message  to  the  Pope,  asking  him  for  a  hun- 
dred missionary  teachers.     The  brothers 

•         •       -ic^nn  -If  11  Kublai  Khan's 

reached  Venice  in  1269,  and  found  that  meBsage  to  the 
Pope  Clement  IV.  was  dead  and  there 
was  an  interregnum.  After  two  years  Gregory  X. 
was  elected  and  received  the  Khan's  message,  but 
could  furnish  only  a  couple  of  Dominican  friars, 
and  these  men  were  seized  with  the  dread  not  un- 
commonly felt  for  "Tartareans,"  and  at  the  last 
moment  refused  to  go.  Nicolb  and  his  brother 
then  set  out  in  the  autumn  of  1271  to  return  to 
China,  taking  with  them  Nicolb 's  son  Marco,  a  lad 
of  seventeen  years.  From  Acre  they  went  by  way 
of  Bagdad  to  Hormuz,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Per- 
sian gulf,  apparently  with  the  intention  of  pro- 
ceeding thence  by  sea,  but  for  some  reason  changed 
their  course,  and  travelled  through  Kerman,  Kho- 
rassan,  and  Balkh,  to  Kashgar,  and  thence  by  way 
of  Yarkand  and  Khotan,  and  across  the  desert  of 
Gobi  into  northwestern  China,  where  they  arrived 
in  the  summer  cf  1275,  and  found  the  Khan  at 
Kalpingfu,  not  far  from  the  northern  end  of  the 
Great  Wall. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  failure  of  Kublai 's 
mission  to  the  Pope  led  him  to  apply  to  the  Grand 
Lama,  at  Thibet,  who  responded  more  efficiently 
and  successfully  than  Gregory  X.,  so  that  Bud- 
dhism seized  the  chance  which  Catholicism  failed 
to  grasp.  The  Venetians,  however,  lost  nothing 
in   the   good   Khan's   esteem.     Young 

__  -*'  11.  IP  o    .  Marco  Polo 

Marco  began  to  make  himself  proficient  ""d  '"'s  travels 

•  1  .  T  .    .  .      .        "*  Asia. 

in  speaking  and  writing  several  Asiatic 
languages,  and  was  presently  taken  Into  the  Khan's 


\l 


282  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

service.  His  name  is  mentioned  in  the  Chinese 
Annals  of  1277  as  a  newly-appointed  commis- 
sioner of  the  privy  council.^  He  remained  in 
Kublai's  service  until  1292,  while  his  father  and 
uncle  were  gathering  wealth  in  various  ways. 
Marco  made  many  official  journeys  up  and  down 
the  Khan's  vast  dominions,  not  only  in  civilized 
China,  but  in  regions  of  the  heart  of  Asia  seldom 
visited  by  Europeans  to  this  day,  —  "a  vast  eth- 
nological garden,"  says  Colonel  Yule,  "of  tribes 
of  various  race  and  in  every  stage  of  unciviliza- 
tion."  In  1292  a  royal  bride  for  the  Khan  of 
Persia  was  to  be  sent  all  the  way  from  Peking  to 
Tabriz,  and  as  war  that  year  made  some  parts  of 
the  overland  route  very  unsafe,  it  was  decided  to 
send  her  by  sea.  The  three  Polos  had  for  some 
time  been  looking  for  an  opportunity  to  return  to 
Venice,  but  Kublai  was  unwilling  to  have  them  go. 
Now,  however,  as  every  Venetian  of  that  day  was 
deemed  to  be  from  his  very  cradle  a  seasoned  sea- 
dog,  and  as  the  kindly  old  Mongol  sovereign  had 
an  inveterate  land-lubber's  misgivings  about  ocean 
voyages,  he  consented  to  part  with  his  dear  friends, 
so  that  lie  might  entrust  the  precious  princess  to 
their  care.     They  sailed  from  the  port 

First  recorded  .  ^^^    ,   "^  ■'■ 

voyage  of  Eu-    01   Zaitou   (Chiuchow)  carlv  in  1292, 
around  the       and  after  long  delays  on  the  coasts  of 

Indo-Chinese  . 

PS',!i"^\'^*'        Sumatra   and   Hindustan,  in   order  to 

1292-94. 

avoid  unfavourable  monsoons,  they 
reached  the  Persian  gulf  in  1294.  They  found 
that  the  royal  bridegroom,  somewhat  advanced  in 
years,  had  died  before  they  started  from  China; 

1  Pautliier's  Marco  Polo,  p.  361 ;  Yule's  Marco  Polo,  p.  IL 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


283 


SO  the  young  princess  became  the  bride  of  his 
son.  After  tarrying  awhile  in  Tabriz,  the  Polos 
returned,  by  way  of  Trebizond  and  the 

T*         1  ^     ^7-       •  ...       ^„^r       Return  of  the 

rJosphorus,  to  Venice,  arriving  in  Izyo.  PoiostoVen- 
When  they  got  there,  says  Ramusio,  af- 
ter their  absence  of  four  and  twenty  years,  "the 
same  fate  befel  them  as  befel  Ulysses,  who,  when 
he  returned  to  his  native  Ithaca,  was  recognized 
by  nobody."  Their  kinsfolk  had  long  since  given 
them  up  for  dead ;  and  when  the  three  wayworn 
travellers  arrived  at  the  door  of  their  own  palace, 
the  middle-aged  men  now  wrinkled  graybeards, 
the  stripling  now  a  portly  man,  all  three  attired 
in  rather  shabby  clothes  of  Tartar  cut,  and  "with 
a  certain  indescribable  smack  of  the  Tartar  about 
tliem,  both  in  air  and  accent,"  some  words  of 
explanation  were  needed  to  prove  their  identity. 
After  a  few  days  they  invited  a  party  of  old  friends 
to  dinner,  and  bringing  forth  three  shabby  coats, 
ripped  open  the  seams  and  welts,  and  began  pulling 
out  and  tumbling  upon  the  table  such  treasures  of 
diamonds  and  emeralds,  rubies  and  sapphires,  as 
could  never  have  been  imagined,  "  which  had  all 
been  stitched  up  in  those  dresses  in  so  artful  a 
fashion  that  nobody  could  have  suspected  the  fact." 
In  such  wise  had  they  brought  home  from  Cathay 
their  ample  earnings ;  and  when  it  became  known 
about  Venice  that  the  three  long-lost  citizens  had 
come  back,  "straightway  the  whole  city,  gentle 
and  simple,  flocked  to  the  house  to  embrace  them, 
a,nd  to  make  much  of  them,  with  everj  conceivable 
demonstration  of  affection  and  respect."^ 

^  Ramuaio,  apud  Yule's  Marco  Polo,  vol.  i.  p.  xxxvii. 


284  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

Three  years  afterward,  in  1298,  Marco  com- 
manded a  galley  in  the  great  naval  battle  with  the 
Genoese  near  Curzola.  The  Venetians  were  to- 
tally defeated,  and  Marco  was  one  of  the  7,000 
prisoners  taken  to  Genoa,  where  he  was  kept  in 
durance  for  about  a  year.  One  of  his  companions 
Marco  Polo's  ^^  Captivity  was  a  certain  Rusticiano, 
iTpriSar  of  Pisa,  who  was  glad  to  listen  to  his 
Genoa,  1299.  dcscriptious  of  Asia,  and  to  act  as  his 
amanuensis.  French  was  then,  at  the  close  of  the 
Crusades,  a  language  as  generally  understood 
throughout  Europe  as  later,  in  the  age  of  Louis 
XIV. ;  and  Marco's  narrative  was  duly  taken 
down  by  the  worthy  Rusticiano  in  rather  lame  and 
shaky  French.  In  the  summer  of  1299  Marco 
was  set  free  and  returned  to  Venice,  where  he 
seems  to  have  led  a  quiet  life  until  his  death  in 
1324. 

"The  Book  of  Ser  Marco  Polo  concerning  the 
Kingdoms  and  Marvels  of  the  East "  is  one  of  the 
most  famous  and  important  books  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  It  contributed  more  new  facts  toward  a 
itsp-eatcon-  knowledge  of  the  earth's  surface  than 
ge?gra5c!S  ^^y  book  that  had  ever  been  written 
Inowiedge.  before.  Its  author  was  "the  first  trav- 
eller to  trace  a  route  across  the  whole  longitude 
of  Asia;"  the  first  to  describe  China  in  its  vast- 
ness,  with  its  immense  cities,  its  manufactures  and 
wealth,  and  to  tell,  whether  from  personal  expe- 
rience or  direct  hearsay,  of  Thibet  and  Burmah, 
of  Siam  and  Cochin  China,  of  the  Indian  archi- 
pelago, with  its  islands  of  spices,  of  Java  and 
Sumatra,  and  of  the  savages  of  Andaman.     He 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


285 


knew  of  Japan  and  the  woful  defeat  of  the  Mon- 
gols there,  when  they  tried  to  invade  the  island 
kingdom  in  1281.  He  gave  a  description  of  Hin- 
dustan far  more  complete  and  characteristic  than 
had  ever  before  been  published.  From  Arab  sail- 
ors, accustomed  to  the  Indian  ocean,  he  learned 
something  about  Zanzibar  and  Madagascar  and 
the  semi-Christian  kingdom  of  Abyssinia.  To  the 
northward  from  Persia  he  described  the  country 
of  the  Golden  Horde,  whose  khans  were  then  hold- 
ing Kussia  in  subjection;  and  he  had  gathered 
some  accurate  information  concerning  Siberia  as 
far  as  the  country  of  the  Samoyeds,  with  their 
dog-sledges  and  polar  bears.  ^ 

Here  was  altogether  too  much  geographical 
knowledge  for  European  ignorance  in  those  days 
to  digest.  While  Marco's  book  attracted  much 
attention,  its  influence  upon  the  progress  of  ge- 
ography was  slighter  than  it  would  have  been  if 
addressed  to  a  more  enlightened  public.  Many 
of  its  sober  statements  of  fact  were  received  with 
incredulity.  Many  of  the  places  described  were 
indistinguishable,  in  European  imagination,  from 
the  general  multitude  of  fictitious  countries  men- 
tioned in  fairy-tales  or  in  romances  of  chivalry. 
Perhaps  no  part  of  Marco's  story  was  so  likely  to 
interest  his   readers   as   his  references  „    ,    ,  ^ 

<•     1        Prester  John. 

to  Prester  John.     In  the  course  of  the 
twelfth  century  the  notion  had   somehow  gained 
possession  of  the  European  mind  that  somewhere 
out  in  the  dim  vastness  of  the  Orient  there  dwelt 
a  mighty  Christian  potentate,  known  as  John  the 

^  Yule's  Marco  Polo,  vol.  i.  p.  oxzxL 


286 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Presbyter  or  "Prester.''^  At  different  times  he 
was  identified  with  various  known  Asiatic  sover- 
ei<^ns.  Marco  Polo  identified  him  with  one  Togrul 
Wang,  who  was  overcome  and  slain  by  the  mighty 
Jenghis ;  but  he  would  not  stay  dead,  any  more 
than  the  grewsome  warlock  in  Russian  nursery 
lore.  The  notion  of  Prester  John  and  his  wealthy 
kingdom  could  no  more  be  expelled  from  the  Eu- 
ropean mind  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  cen- 
turies than  the  kindred  notion  of  El  Dorado  in 
the  sixteenth.  The  position  of  this  kingdom  was 
shifted  about  here  and  there,  as  far  as  from  Chi- 
nese Tartary  to  Abyssinia  and  back  again,  but 
The 'Arimas-  somewherc  or  other  in  people's  vague 
pians."  mental  picture  of  the  East  it  was  sure 

to  occur.  Other  remote  regions  in  Asia  were  peo- 
pled with  elves  and  griffins  and  "  one-eyed  Arimas- 
pians,"2  and   we  may  be    sure  that   to  Marco's 

1    "  But  for  to  speake  of  riches  and  of  stones, 
And  men  and  horse,  I  trow  the  large  wonea 
Of  Prestir  Jolin,  ne  all  his  tresorie. 
Might  not  unneth  have  boght  the  tenth  partie." 

Chaucer,  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf^  2i  J. 

The  fabulous  kingdom  of  Prester  John  is  ably  treated  in 
Yule's  Cathay,  vol.  i.  pp.  174-182;  Marco  Polo,  vol.  i.  p.  204- 
216.  Colonel  Yule  suspects  that  its  prototype  may  have  been  the 
semi-Christian  kingdom  of  Abyssinia.  This  is  very  likely.  As 
for  its  range,  shifted  hither  and  thither  as  it  was,  all  the  way  from 
the  upper  Nile  to  the  Thian-Shan  mountains,  we  can  easily  un- 
derstand this  if  we  remember  how  an  ignorant  mind  conceives  all 
points  distant  from  its  own  position  as  near  to  one  another ;  i.  e. 
if  you  are  about  to  start  from  New  York  for  Arizona,  your 
housemaid  will  perhaps  ask  you  to  deliver  a  message  to  her 
brother  in  Manitoba.  Nowhere  more  than  in  the  history  of  ge- 
ography do  we  need  to  keep  before  us,  at  every  step,  the  limita- 
tions of  the  untutored  mind  and  its  feebleness  in  grasping  the 
space-relations  of  remote  regions. 

^  These  Arimaspians  afford  an  interesting  example  of  the  uo* 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


28T 


readers  these  beings  were  quite  as  real  as  the  pol- 
ished citizens  of  Cambaluc  (Peking)  or  the  canni- 
bals of  the  Andaman  islands.  From  such  a  chaos 
of  ideas  sound  geograi3hical  knowledge  must  needs 
be  a  slow  evolution,  and  Marco  Polo's  acquisitions 
were  altogether  too  far  in  advance  of  his  age  to  be 
readily  assimilated. 

Nevertheless,  in  the  Catalan  map,  made  in  1375, 
and  now  to  be  seen  in  the  National  Library  it 
Paris,  there  is  a  thorough-going  and  not  unsuccess- 
ful attempt  to  embody  the  results  of  other  visits  to 
Polo's  travels.  In  the  interval  of  three  ^^'^^ 
quarters  of  a  century  since  the  publication  of 
Marco's  narrative,  several  adventurous  travellers 
had  found  their  way  to  Cathay.     There  was  Friar 

critical  statements  of  travellers  at  an  early  time,  as  well  as  of 
their  tenacious  vitality.  The  first  mention  of  these  m3rthical 
people  seems  to  have  been  made  by  Greek  travellers  in  Scythia 
as  early  as  the  seventh  century  before  Christ ;  and  they  furnished 
Aristeas  of  Proconnesus,  somewhat  later,  with  the  theme  of  his 
poem  "  Arimaspeia,"  which  has  perished,  all  except  six  verses 
quoted  by  Longinus.  See  Mure's  Literature  of  Antient  Greece, 
vol.  iv.  p.  68.  Thence  the  notion  of  the  Arimaspians  seems  to 
have  passed  to  Herodotus  (iii.  116  ;  iv.  27)  and  to  .^chyluB :  — 

6^u(TTdjK0V{  yap  Zvjcbt  axpaytlt  Kvvat 

ypvnai  ^vAo^ei,  Tdf  re  fiovctoira  iTTparhv 

'Apitiacnrhv  iirrro/Saiioi/',  o'i  xpvtroppvrov 

oiKOvaii'  a/i0l  vafxa  XlKovrotvot  nopov 

rovToii  arv  p.ri  n-eAajJe. 

Prometheus,  802. 

Thence  it  passed  on  to  Pausanias,  i.  24;  Pomponius  Mela,  n. 
1 ;  Pliny,  Hist.  Nat.,  vii.  2 ;  Lucan,  Pharsalia,  iii.  280 ;  and  so 
on  to  Milton :  — 

"  As  when  a  gryphon  through  the  wilderness, 
With  winged  course  o'er  liill  or  moory  dale, 
Pursues  the  Arimaspian  wlio  by  stealth 
Had  from  his  walteful  custody  purloined 
The  guarded  gold." 

Paradise  Lost,  ii.  944. 


288 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


BaMWCOM 


T  A  R  S  S  I  A-"*/  ofAMet 

'tnci  CfMi  rut 

\^  •moit««I 


oHociacLCH 


_  JtTHiao    \\^  * 


ARABIA        SEBBA 

tomutitLV  or  TMt  OuirK  or  SrmmA     ^ 
.n^  o,  rnt  ^A,ACt,  AntM 

*....  SUltM*, 

aAdcf \ 

\  kd.»      AOWAMAUT 


Two  sheets  of 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


289 


the  Catalan  Map,  1375. 


290 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Odoric,  of  Pordenone,  who,  during  the  years  1316- 
30  visited  Hindustan,  Sumatra,  Java,  Cochin 
China,  the  Chinese  Empire,  and  Thibet.^  It  was 
from  this  worthy  monk  that  the  arrant  ohl  impos- 
tor, "Sir  Jolm  Mandeville,"  stole  his  descriptions 
of  India  and  Cathay,  seasoning  them  with  yarns 
from  Pliny  and  Ktesias,  and  grotesque  conceits  of 
his  own. 2  Several  other  missionary  friars  visited 
China  between  1302  and  1330,  and  about  ten 
years  after  the  latter  date  the  Florentine  mer- 
chant, Francesco  Pegolotti,  wrote  a  very  useful 
handbook  for  commercial  travellers  on  the  over- 


^  Odoric  mentions  Juggernaut  processions  and  the  burning  of 
widows ;  in  Sumatra  he  observed  cannibalism  and  community  of 
•wives ;  he  found  the  kingdom  of  Prester  John  in  Chinese  Tar- 
tary;  "but  as  regards  him,"  says  wise  Odoric,  "not  one  hun- 
dredth part  is  true  of  what  is  told  of  him  as  if  it  were  unde- 
niable."    Yule's  Cathay,  vol.  j.  pp.  70,  85,  146. 

2  Colonel  YiJe  gives  a  list  of  fourteen  important  pass^es 
taken  bodily  from  Odoric  by  Mandeville.  Op.  cit.  i.  28.  It  is 
very  doubtful  if  that  famous  book,  "  Sir  John  Mandeville 's  Trav- 
els," was  written  by  a  Mandeville,  or  by  a  knight,  or  even  by  an 
Englishman.  It  seems  to  have  been  originally  written  in  French 
by  Jean  de  Bourgogne,  a  physician  who  lived  for  some  yearsj  at 
Li^ge,  and  died  there  soi.iewhere  about  1370.  He  may  possibly 
have  been  an  Englishman  named  John  Burgoyne,  who  was  obliged 
some  years  before  that  date  to  flee  his  country  for  homicide  or 
for  some  political  offence.  He  had  travelled  as  far  as  Egypt  and 
Palestine,  but  no  farther.  His  book  is  almost  entirely  cribbed 
from  others,  among  which  may  be  mentioned  the  works  of 
Jacques  de  Vitry,  Piano  Carpini,  Ilayton  the  Ax-menian,  Bol- 
densele's  Itinerary,  Albert  of  Aix's  chronicle  of  the  first  crusade, 
Brunetto  Latini's  Trhor,  Petrus  Comestor's  Historia  scholatittca, 
the  Speculum  of  Vincent  de  Beauvais,  etc.,  etc.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  wholesale  and  successful  instances  of  plagiarism  and  impos- 
ture on  record.  See  The  Buke  of  John  Mandevill,  from  the  unique 
copy  (Eyerton  MS.  1982)  in  the  British  Museum.  Edited  by  G.  F. 
Warner.    Westminster,  1830.     (Roxburghe  Club.) 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


291 


land  route  to  that  country.^  Between  1338  and 
1353  Giovanni  Marignolli  spent  some  years  at 
Peking,  as  papal  legate  from  Benedict  XL  to  the 
Great  Khan,  and  also  travelled  in  Ceylon  and 
Hindustan.^  That  seems  to  have  been  the  last  of 
these  journeys  to  the  Far  East.  In  1368,  the 
people  of  China  rose  against  the  Mon- 

11  1  1  •  n^^       n  Overthrow  of 

gol  dynasty  and  overthrew  it.      1  he  first  the  Mongol 

i?    xi  ^-  TVT-  1  ^       dynasty,  and 

emperor  or   the   native   Mmg  dynasty  shuttiuKup 

1  1  1  1  *=       •^         /     of  China. 

was  placed  upon  the  throne,  and  the 
Chinese  retorted  upon  their  late  conquerors  by 
overrunning  vast  Mongolia  and  making  it  Chi- 
nese Tartary.  The  barriers  thrown  down  by  the 
liberal  policy  of  the  Mongol  sovereigns  were  now 
put  up  again,  and  no  more  foreigners  were  al- 
lowed to  set  foot  upon  the  sacred  soil  of  the  Flow- 
ery Kingdom. 

Thus,  for  just  a  century,  —  from  Carpini  and 
Rubruquis  to  Marignolli,  —  while  China  was  open 
to  strangers  as  never  Vjefore  or  since,  a  few  Euro- 
peans had  availed  themselves  of  the  opportunity  in 
such  wise  as  to  mark  the  beginning  of  a  new  era 

^  One  piece  of  Pej^olotti's  advice  is  still  useful  for  travellers 
in  the  nineteenth  century  who  visit  benighted  heathen  countries 
afflicted  with  robber  tariffs  :  "  And  don't  forget  that  if  you  treat 
the  custom-house  officers  with  respect,  and  luake  them  something' 
of  a  present  in  goods  or  money,  they  will  behave  with  great  civ- 
ility and  always  be  ready  to  appraise  your  wares  below  their  real 
value."     Op.  cit.  ii.  307. 

2  The  works  of  all  the  writers  mentioned  in  this  parjigraph,  or 
copious  extracts  from  them,  may  be  found  in  Yule's  Cathay, 
which  comprises  also  the  book  of  the  celebrated  Ibn  Batuta,  of 
Tangier,  whose  travels,  between  1325  and  1355,  covered  pretty 
mucli  the  whole  of  Asia  except  Siberia,  besides  a  journey  across 
Saliara  to  the  river  TS'iger.  His  book  does  not  sef  ;u  to  have  at- 
tracted attention  in  Europe  until  early  in  the  present  century. 


r 

I 


292  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

in  the  history  of  geographical  knowledge.  Though 
the  discoveries  of  Marco  Polo  were  as  yet  but  im- 
perfectly appreciated,  one  point,  and  that  the  most 
significant  of  all,  was  thoroughly  established.  It 
was  shown  that  the  continent  of  Asia  did  not  ex- 
tend indefinitely  eastward,  nor  was  it  bounded  and 
barricaded  on  that  side,  as  Ptolemy  had  imag- 
ined, by  vast  impenetiable  swamps.  On  the  con- 
trary, its  eastern  shores  were  perfectly  accessible 
through  an  open  sea,  and  half  a  dozen  Europeans 
in  Chinese  ships  had  now  actually  made  the 
voyage  between  the  coast  of  China  and  the  Per- 
sian guK .  Moreover,  some  hearsay  knowledge  — 
enough  to  provoke  curiosity  and  greed  —  had 
been  gained  of  the  existence  of  numerous  islands 
First  rumours  ^^  ^^^^  far-off  eastern  ocean,  rich  in 
hIccalsKdt  tl^6  spices  which  from  time  immemo- 
aud  Japan.  ^.j^^j  j^^^  formed  such  an  important  ele- 
ment in  Mediterranean  commerce.  News,  also, 
had  been  brought  to  Europe  of  the  wonderful 
island  kingdom  of  Japan  (Cipango  or  Zipangu) 
lying  out  in  that  ocean  some  hundreds  of  miles  be- 
yond the  coast  of  Cathay.  These  were  rich  coun- 
tries, abounding  in  objects  of  lucrative  traffic. 
Under  the  liberal  Mongol  rule  the  Oriental  trade 
had  increased  enough  for  Europe  to  feel  in  many 
ways  its  beneficial  effects.  Now  this  trade  began 
to  be  suddenly  and  severely  checked,  and  while 
access  to  the  interior  of  Asia  was  cut  off,  Euro- 
pean merchants  might  begin  to  reflect  upon  the 
value  of  what  they  were  losing,  and  to  consider  if 
there  were  any  feasible  method  of  recovering  it. 
It  was  not  merely  the  shutting  up  of  China  by 


EUROPE  AND  CATHAY. 


293 


Tlie  accus- 
tomed routes 
of  Oriental 
trade  cut  off 
by  the  Otto- 
man Turks. 


the  first  Ming  emperor,  in  1368,  that  checked  the 
intercourse  between  Europe  and  Asia.  A  still 
more  baleful  obstacle  to  all  such  intercourse  had 
lately  come  upon  the  scene.  In  Asia  Minor  the 
beastly  Turk,  whose  career  had  been 
for  two  centuries  arrested  by  the  Cru- 
sades, now  reared  his  head  again.  The 
Seljukian  had  been  only  scotched,  not 
killed ;  and  now  he  sprang  to  life  as  the  Ottoman, 
with  sharper  fangs  than  before.  In  1365  the 
Turks  established  themselves  in  the  Balkan  pe- 
ninsula, with  Adrianople  as  their  capital,  and 
began  tightening  their  coils  about  the  doomed 
city  of  Constantine.  Each  point  that  they  gained 
meant  the  strangling  of  just  so  much  Oriental 
trade ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  the  alliance  of  Con- 
stantinople with  Genoa  since  1261  had  secured  to 
the  latter  city,  and  to  western  Europe,  the  advan- 
tages of  the  overland  routes  from  Asia,  whether 
through  the  Volga  country  or  across  Armenia. 
When  at  length,  in  1453,  the  Turks  took  Con- 
stantinople, the  splendid  commercial  career  of 
Genoa  was  cut  with  the  shears  of  Atropos.  At 
the  same  time,  as  their  power  was  rapidly  extend- 
ing over  Syria  and  down  toward  Egypt,  threaten- 
ing the  overthrow  of  the  liberal  Mameluke  dy- 
nasty there,  the  commercial  prosperity  of  Venice 
also  was  seriously  imperilled.  Moreover,  as  Turk- 
ish corsairs  began  to  swarm  in  the  eastern  waters 
of  the  Mediterranean,  the  voyage  became  more  and 
more  unsafe  for  Christian  vessels.  It  was  thus, 
while  the  volume  of  trade  with  Asia  was,  in  the 
natural  course  of  things,  swelling  year  by  year, 


hi' 


;ll 


294  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

that  its  accustomed  routes  were  being  ruthlessly 
cut  off.     It  was  fast  becoming  necessary  to  con- 
sider whether  there  might  not  be  other  practicable 
routes  to  "the  Indies"  than  those  which 

Necessity  for      ,       ,     „  ..  .  •    i     i  <•   i 

findiuR  an        had  irom   time   immemorial    been  lol- 
route  to  the      lowcd.     Could  there  be  such  a  thing  as 

Indies. " 

an  "outside  route"  to  that  land  of 
promise?  A  more  startling  question  has  seldom 
been  propounded ;  for  it  involved  a  radical  depar- 
ture from  the  grooves  in  which  the  human  mind 
had  been  running  ever  since  thr;  days  of  Solomon. 
Two  generations  of  men  lived  and  died  while  this 
question  was  taking  shape,  and  all  that  time  Ca- 
thay and  India  and  the  islands  of  Spices  were  ob- 
jects of  increasing  desire,  clothed  by  eager  fancy 
with  all  manner  of  charms  and  riches.  The  more 
effectually  the  eastern  Mediterranean  was  closed, 
the  stronger  grew  the  impulse  to  venture  upon 
unknown  paths  in  order  to  realize  the  vague  but 
glorious  hopes  that  began  to  cluster  about  these 
remote  countries.  Such  an  era  of  romantic  enter- 
prise as  was  thus  ushered  in,  the  world  has  never 
seen  before  or  since.  It  was  equally  remarkable 
as  an  era  of  discipline  in  scientific  thinking-  In 
the  maritime  ventures  of  unparalleled  boldness 
now  to  be  described,  the  human  mind  was  groping 
toward  the  era  of  enormous  extensions  of  know- 
ledge in  space  and  time  represented  by  the  names 
of  Newton  and  Darwin.  It  was  learning  the  right 
way  of  putting  its  trust  in  the  Unseen. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   THE  INDIES. 


EASTWARD  OR  PORTUGUESE  ROUTE. 

As  it  dawned  upon  men's  minds  that  to  find 
some  oceanic  route  from  Europe  to  the  remote 
shores  of  Asia  was  eminently  desirable,  the  first 
attempt  would  naturally  be  to  see  what  could  be 
done  by  saiUng  down  the  western  coast  Question  as  to 
of  Africa,  and  ascertaining  whether  ^oufdbe^"* 
that  continent  could  be  circumnavi-  Bariing*l?ound 
gated.  It  was  also  quite  in  the  natural  ^^'■''"*' 
order  of  things  that  this  first  attempt  should  be 
made  by  the  Portuguese. 

In  the  general  history  of  the  Middle  Ages  the 
Spanisli  peninsula  had  been  to  some  extent  cut  off 
from  the  main  currents  of  thought  and  feeling 
which  actuated  the  rest  of  Europe.  Its  people 
had  never  joined  the  other  Christian  nations  in 
the  Crusades,  for  the  good  reason  that  they  al- 
ways had  quite  enough  to  occupy  them  in  their 
own  domestic  struggle  with  the  Moors.  From  the 
throes  of  this  prolonged  warfare  Portugal  emerged 
somewhat  sooner  than  the  Sjjanish  kingdoms,  and 
thus  had  somewhat  earlier  a  surplus  of  energy 
released  for  work  of  another  sort.  It  was  not 
strange  that  the  Portuguese  should  be  the  fii-st 
people  since  the  old  Northmen  to  engage  in  dis- 


A 


»*i 


296 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


iil 


tant  maritime  adventure  upon  a  grand  scale.  Nor 
was  it  strange  that  Portuguese  seamanship  should 
at  first  have  thriven  upon  naval  warfare  with  Mus- 
sulmans. It  was  in  attempting  to  suppress  the 
intolerable  nuisance  of  Moorish  piracy  that  Portu- 
guese ships  became  accustomed  to  sail  a  little  way- 
down  the  west  coast  of  Africa;  and  such  voyages, 
begun  for  military  purposes,  were  kept  up  in  the 
interests  of  commerce,  and  presently  served  as  a 
mighty  stimulus  to  geographical  curiosity.  We 
have  now  to  consider  at  some  length  how  gi-ave 
was  the  problem  that  came  up  for  immediate  solu- 
tion. 


"With  regard  to  the  circumnavigability  of  Aj'- 
rica  two  opposite  opinions  were  maintained  by  the 
ancient  Greek  and  Latin  writer^  whose  authority 
the  men  of  the  Middle  Ages  were  wont  to  quote 
as  decisive  of  every  vexed  question.  The  old  Ho- 
meric notion  of  an  ocean  encompassing  the  terres- 
trial world,  although  mentioned  with  doubt  by 
Herodotus,!  confinued  to  survive  after 

VlGWS  Or 

Eratosthenes,    the  globular  form  of  the  earth  had  come 
B.  c.  ;i7o-i%.      1      1 

to  be  generally  maintained  by  ancient 

geographers.     The  greatest  of  these  geographers, 

Eratosthenes,  correctly  assumed  that  the  Indian 

ocean  was  continuous  with  the  Atlantic,^  and  that 

Africa  could  be  circumnavigated,  just  as  he  incor- 

1  Thv  Sh  'nKfavhv  \6y(^  fxlv  \4yovffi  Air'  fi\(ov  ivaroXewv  ip^d- 
Hevov  yijv  wepl  iratrav  pe^iv,  tpycp  Se  ovk  awoSfiKvvffi.  Herodotus, 
hr.  8. 

'^  Ka\  yap  kot'  avrdu  ^'EparoaBivq  r^v  iKrhs  OdXarrav  &iraaap 
ffvppovv  ehai,  &(TTe  kuI  tV  'Eairepiov  Kal  tV  'EpvOpitv  OdXaTTor 
lilav  thai.    Strabo,  i.  3,  §  13. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


29T 


rectly  assumed  that  the  Caspian  sea  was  a  huge 
gulf  communicating  with  a  northern  ocean,  by 
which  it  woukl  be  possible  to  sail  around  the  con- 
tinent of  Asia  as  he  imagined  it.^  A  similar  opin- 
ion as  to  Africa  was  held  by  Posidonius  and  by 
Strabo.'^  It  was  called  in  question,  however,  by 
Polybius,^  and  was  flatly  denied  by  the  great  as- 
tronomer Hipparchus,  who  thought  that  certain 
observations  on  the  tides,  reported  by  Seleucus  of 
Babylon,  proved  that  there  could  be  no  connection 
between  the  Atlantic  and  Indian  oceans.^  Clau- 
dius Ptolemy,  writing  in  the  second  century  after 
Christ,  followed  the  opinion  of  Hippar-  opposing 
chus,  and  carried  to  an  extreme  the  pioJemy.^cir. 
reaction  against  Eratosthenes.  By  *•  "•  ^^' 
Ptolemy's  time  the  Caspian  had  been  proved  to  be 
an  inland  sea,  and  it  was  evident  that  Asia  ex- 
tended much  farther  to  the  north  and  east  than 
had  once  been  supposed.  This  seems  to  have  dis- 
credited in  his  mind  the  whole  conception  of  outside 
oceans,  and  he  not  only  gave  an  indefinite  north- 
ward and  eastward  extension  to  Asia  and  an  in- 
definite southern  extension  to  Africa,  but  brouglit 
these  two  continents  together  far  to  the  southeast, 
thus  making  the  Indian  ocean  a  landlocked  sea.^ 
These  views  of  Hipparchus  and  Ptolemy  took 


1  Bunbury,  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  vol.  i.  p.  644. 

2  Strabo,  li.  3,  §  4 ;  xvii.  .S,  ^  1. 

'  KaBdirtp  Sh  koI  ttjs  'Afflas  Ka\  rrjs  Ai)9u7ji,  Ka6h  avvdvrovffiy 
a\\-fi\ais  irfpl  rijv  AlOioniav,  ovSels  ^x^ '  ^fytiv  krptKus  fwi;  twv 
KaO'  •^juSy  Kaipwv,  irSrepov  fTreip4s  iffri  Kara  rb  crvpfx^^  '''^  irphs  ri)v 
tJLfffr} fi^piav,  1)  OaKdrrr)  Trepic'xeTai.     Polybius,  iii.  38. 

*  Bunbury,  (^.  cit.  vol.  ii.  p.  15. 

^  See  the  map  of  Ptolemy's  world,  above,  p.  264. 


u 


298  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

no  heed  of  the  story  told  to  Herodotus  of  the  ciri< 
cuinnavigation  of  Africa  by  a  Phoenician  squadron 
story  of  tiio  ^^  some  time  during  the  reign  of  Necho 
voSSthe  in  Egypt  (610-595  b.  c.y  The  Phoe- 
time  of  Necho.  jji^jg^Q   ships  Were  said  to  have  sailed 

from  the  Red  Sea  and  to  have  returned  through 
the  Mediterranean  in  the  third  year  after  start- 
ing.  In  each  of  the  two  autumn  seasons  they 
stopped  and  sowed  grain  and  waited  for  it  to 
ripen,  which  in  southern  Africa  would  require  ten 
or  twelve  weeks.^  On  their  return  to  Egypt  they 
declared  ("  I  for  mv  part  do  not  believe  them," 
says  Herodotus,  "  biit  perhaps  others  may  ")  that 
in  thus  sailing  from  east  to  west  around  Africa 
they  had  the  sun  upon  their  right  hand.  About  this 
alleged  voyage  there  has  been  a  good  deal  of  con- 
troversy.^    No  other  expedition  in  any  wise  com- 

^  Ptolemy  expressly  declares  that  the  equatorial  regions  had 
never  been  visited  by  people  from  the  northern  hemisphere: 
Tlpes  5e  elaiv  ai  olicfiffeis  ovk  hv  ^x*"/*^"  ireTf KJ/ueVois  flireTv.  "At- 
piTTTOi  ydp  fl(Ti  fifXP^  ''"''*'  Sevpo  To7s  anb  rrjs  KaO'  Tj/xas  olKovfjLfvfls, 
Kol  flKacrlav  fjLuWnu  &v  ns  ^  iarcplav  rjyficrairo  rti.  \ey6ixfva  irepl 
avriiiv.     Syntaxis,  ii.  6. 

^  Rawlinson's  Herodotus,  vol.  iii.  p.  29,  note  8. 

^  The  story  is  discredited  by  Mannert,  Geographie  der  Griechen 
und  Romer,  bd.  i.  pp.  19-2(3;  Gossellin,  Recherches  sur  la  geog- 
raphie des  Anciens,  torn.  i.  p.  149  ;  Lewis,  Astronomi/  of  the  An- 
cients, pp.  508-515 ;  Vincent,  Commerce  and  Navigation  of  the 
Ancients  in  the  Indian  Ocean,  vol.  i.  pp.  303-311,  vol.  ii.  pp.  13- 
15 ;  Leake,  Disputed  Questions  of  Ancient  Geography,  pp.  1-8. 
It  is  defended  by  Heeren,  Ideen  liber  die  Politik,  den  Verkehr,  etc., 
3e  aufl.,  Gottingen,  1815,  bd.  i.  abth.  ii.  pp.  87-93 ;  Rennell,  Ge- 
ography of  Herodotus,  pp.  672-714;  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  vol. 
iii.  pp.  377-385.  The  case  is  ably  presented  in  Eunbury's  History 
of  Ancient  Geography,  vol.  i.  pp.  289-29(5,  where  it  is  concluded 
that  the  story  "  cannot  be  disproved  or  pronounced  to  be  abso- 
lutely impossible ;  but  the  difficidtiea  and  improbabilities  attend* 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


299 


parable  to  it  for  length  and  difficulty  can  be  cited . 
from  ancient  history,  and  a  critical  scholar  is  in- 
clined to  look  with  suspicion  upon  all  such  accounts 
of  unique  and  isolated  events.  As  we  have  not 
the  details  of  the  story,  it  is  impossible  to  give  it  a 
satisfactory  critical  examination.  The  circumstance 
most  likely  to  convince  us  of  its  truth  is  precisely 
that  which  dear  old  Herodotus  deemed  incredible. 
The  position  of  the  sun,  to  the  north  of  the  mari- 
ners, is  something  that  could  hardly  have  been 
imagined  by  people  familiar  only  with  the  northern 
hemisphere.  It  is  therefore  almost  certain  that 
Necho's  expedition  sailed  beyond  the  equator.^ 
But  that  is  as  far  as  inference  can  properly  carry 
us ;  for  our  experience  of  the  ur  critical  temper  of 
ancient  narrators  is  enough  to  suggest  that  such 

ing  it  are  so  great  that  they  cannot  reasonably  be  set  aside  -with- 
out better  evidence  than  the  mere  statement  of  Herodotus,  upon 
the  authority  of  unknown  informants."  Mr.  Bunbury  (vol.  i.  p. 
317)  says  that  he  has  reasons  for  believing  that  Mr.  Grote  after- 
wards changed  his  opinion  and  came  to  agree  with  Sir  George 
Lewis. 

^  In  reading  the  learned  works  of  Sir  George  Comewall  Lewis, 
one  is  often  reminded  of  what  Sainte-Beuve  somewhere  says  of 
the  great  scholar  Letronne,  when  he  had  spent  the  hour  of  his 
lecture  in  demolishing  some  pretty  or  popular  belief :  "  II  se  frotta 
les  mains  et  s'en  alia  bien  content."  When  it  came  to  ancient 
history,  Sir  George  was  undeniably  fond  of  "  the  everlasting 
No."  In  the  present  case  his  skepticism  seems  on  the  whole 
well-judged,  but  some  of  his  arguments  savour  of  undue  haste 
toward  a  negative  conclusion.  He  thus  strangely  forgets  that 
what  we  call  autumn  is  springtime  in  the  southern  hemisphere 
(Astronomy  of  the  Ancients,  p.  511).  His  argument  that  the  time 
alleged  was  insufficient  for  the  voyage  is  fully  met  by  Major 
Bennell,  who  has  shown  that  the  time  was  amply  sufficient,  and 
that  the  direction  of  winds  and  ocean  currents  would  make  the 
voyage  around  southern  Africa  from  east  to  west  much  easier 
than  from  west  to  east. 


I 


800  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

an  achievement  might  easily  be  magnified  by  T\h 
mour  into  the  story  told,  more  than  a  century  after 
the  event,  to  Herodotus.  The  data  are  too  slight 
to  justify  us  in  any  dogmatic  opinion.  One  thing, 
however,  is  clear.  Even  if  the  circumnavigation 
was  effected,  —  which,  on  the  whole,  seems  improb- 
able, —  it  remained  quite  barren  of  results.  It 
produced  no  abiding  impression  upon  men's  minds  * 
and  added  nothing  to  geographical  knowledge. 
The  veil  of  mystery  was  not  lifted  from  southern 
Africa.  The  story  was  doubted  by  Strabo  and 
Posidonius,  and  passed  unheeded,  as  we  have  seen, 
by  Hipparchus  and  Ptolemy. 

Of  Phoenician  and  other  voyages  along  the  At- 
lantic coast  of  Africa  we  have  much  more  detailed 
and  trustworthy  information.  As  early  as  the 
twelfth  century  before  Christ  traders  from  Tyre 
had  founded  Cadiz  (Gades),'^  and  at  a  later  date 
the  same  hardy  people  seem  to  have  made  the  be- 
ginnings of  Lisbon  (Olisipo).  From  such  advanced 
stations  Tyiian  and  Carthaginian  ships  sometimes 
found  their  way  northward  as  far  as  Cornwall,  and 
in  the  opposite  direction  fishing  voyages  were  made 
along  the  African  coast.  The  most  remarkable  un- 
voya  e  of  dcrtakiug  in  this  quarter  was  the  famous 
Hwrno.  voyage  of  the  Carthaginian  commander 

Hanno,  whose  own  brief  but  "ateresting  account 

1  "  No  trace  of  it  could  be  found  in .  the  Alexandrian  library, 
either  by  Eratosthenes  in  the  third,  or  by  Marinus  of  Tyre  in  the 
second,  century  before  Christ,  although  both  of  them  were  dili- 
gent examiners  of  ancient  records."  Major,  Prince  Henry  the 
Navigator,  p.  90. 

^  Rawlinson's  History  of  Phoenicia,  pp.  105,  418 ;  Pseudo-Aria* 
totle,  Mirab.  AusctUt.,  146 ;  Yelleius  Paterculus,  i.  2,  §  6. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


301 


of  it  has  been  preserved.^  This  expedition  con- 
sisted of  sixty  penteconters  (fifty-oared  ships),  and 
its  chief  purpose  was  colonization.  Upon  the 
Mauritanian  coast  seven  small  trading  stations 
were  founded,  one  of  which  —  Kerne,  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Rio  d'  Ouro  ^  —  existed  for  a  long  time. 
From  this  point  Hanno  made  two  voyages  of  ex- 
ploration, the  second  of  which  carried  him  as  far 
as  Sierra  Leone  and  the  neighbouring  Sherboro 
island,  where  he  found  "  wild  men  and  women  cov- 
ered with  hair,"  called  by  the  interpreters  "  goril- 
las."^ At  that  point  the  ships  turned  back,  ap- 
parently for  want  of  provisions. 

No  other  expedition  in  ancient  times  is  known 
to  have  proceeded  so  far  south  as  Sierra  Leone. 
Two  other  voyages  upon  this  Atlantic  coast  are 
mentioned,  but  without  definite  details.  The  one 
was  that  of  Sataspes  (about  470  b.  c),  narrated 


1  Hanno,  Periplus,  in  Miiller,  Geographi  Greed  Minores,  torn.  i. 
pp.  1-14.  Of  two  or  three  commanders  named  Hanno  it  is  un- 
certain which  was  the  one  who  led  this  expedition,  and  thus  its 
date  has  been  variously  assigned  from  570  to  470  B.  c. 

^  For  the  determination  of  these  localities  see  Bunbury,  <^.  cit. 
vol.  i.  pp.  318-335.  There  is  an  interesting  Spanish  description 
of  Hanno's  expedition  in  Mariana,  Historia  de  Espaha,  Madrid, 
1783,  torn.  i.  pp.  89-93. 

^  The  sailors  pursued  them,  but  did  not  capture  any  of  the 
males,  who  scrambled  up  the  cliffs  out  of  their  reach.  They 
captured  three  females,  who  bit  and  scratched  so  fiercely  that  it 
was  useless  to  try  to  take  them  away.  So  they  killed  them  and 
took  their  skins  home  to  Carthage.  Periplus,  xviii.  According 
to  Pliny  (Hist.  Nat.,  vi.  36)  these  skins  were  hung  up  as  a  votive 
offering  in  the  temple  of  Juno  (i.  e.  Astarte  or  Ashtoreth :  see 
Apuleius,  Metamorph..  xi.  257 ;  Gesenius,  Monumenta  Phcenic,  p. 
168),  where  they  might  have  been  seen  at  any  time  before  ?> 
Romans  destroyed  the  city. 


1  !'M  802  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMEItlCA. 

I   I  I  by  Herodotus,  who  merely  tells  us  that  a  coast  was 

reached  where  undersized  men,  clad  in  palm-leaf 

garments,  fled  to  the  hills  at  sight  of 
Satiwpesond     the  strangc  visitors.!     The   other    was 

that  of  Eudoxus  (about  85  B.  c),  re- 
lated by  Posidonius,  the  friend  and  teacher  of 
Cicero.  The  story  is  that  this  Eudoxus,  in  a  voy- 
age upon  the  east  coast  of  Africa,  having  a  philo- 
logical turn  of  mind,  wrote  down  the  words  of 
some  of  the  natives  whom  he  met  here  and  there 
along  the  shore.  He  also  picked  up  a  ship's  prow 
in  the  form  of  a  horse's  head,  and  upon  his  return 
to  Alexandria  some  merchants  professed  to  recog- 
nize it  as  belonging  to  a  ship  of  Cadiz,  Eudoxus 
thereupon  concluded  that  Africa  was  circumnavi- 
gable,  and  presently  sailed  through  the  Mediterra- 
nean and  out  upon  the  Atlantic.  Somewhere  upon 
the  coast  of  Mauritania  he  found  natives  who  used 
some  words  of  similar  sound  to  those  which  he  had 
written  down  when  visiting  the  eastern  coast, 
whence  he  concluded  that  they  were  people  of  the 
^ame  race.  At  this  point  he  turned  back,  and  the 
sequel  of  the  story  was  unknown  to  Posidonius.^ 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  both  Pliny  and  Pompo- 
^jius  Mela,  quoting  Cornelius  Nepos  as  their  author- 
ity, speak  of  Eudoxus  as  having  circumnavigctted 
Africa  from  the  Red  Sea  to  Cadiz ;  and  Pliny,  more- 
over, tells  us  that  Hanno  sailed  around  that  conti- 
nent as  far  as  Arabia,^  —  a  statement  which  is 

^  Herodotus,  iv.  43. 

2  The  story  is  preserved  by  Strabo,  ii.  3,  §§  4,  5,  \vho  rejects  it 
with  a  vehemence  for  which  no  adequate  reason  is  assigned. 
8  Pliny,  Hist.  Nat.,  ii.  67 ;  Mela,  De  Situ  Orbis,  lii.  9. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


803 


clearly  false.  These  examples  show  how  stories 
grow  when  carelessly  and  uncritically  repeated, 
and  thty  strongly  tend  to  confirm  the  w,,^  exagger- 
doubt  with  which  one  is  inclined  to  re-  *"'""• 
gard  the  tale  of  Necho's  sailors  above  mentioned. 
In  truth,  the  island  of  Gorillas,  discovered  by 
Hanno,  was  doubtless  the  most  southerly  point  on 
that  coast  reached  by  navigators  in  ancient  times. 
Of  the  islands  in  the  western  ocean  the  Carthagin- 
ians certainly  knew  the  Canaries  (where  they  have 
left  undoubted  inscriptions),  probably  also  the 
Madeiras,  and  j)ossibly  the  Cape  Verde  group.  ^ 

The  extent  of  the  knowledge  which  the  ancients 
thus  had  of  western  Africa  is  well  illustrated  in 
the  map  representing  the  geographical  theories  of 
Pomponius  Mela,  whose  book  was  written  about 
A.  D.  50.     Of  the  eastern  coast  and  the  interior 

^  After  the  civil  war  of  Sertorius  (b.  c.  80-72),  the  Romans 
became  acquainted  with  the  Canaries,  which,  because  of  tiieir 
luxuriant  vegetation  and  soft  climate,  were  identified  with  the 
Elysium  described  by  Homer,  and  were  commonly  known  as  the 
Fortunate  islands.  "  Contra  Fortunatie  Insitlse  abundant  sua 
sponte  genitis,  et  subinde  aliis  super  aliis  innascentibus  nihil  sol- 
licitoii  alunt,  beatius  quam  alias  urbes  excultae."     Mela,  ill.  10. 

'AAAa  (r'  es  'HAutrioi'  ne&iov  Koi  neipara  yairjs 
oBdvaTOi,  7T(iJL\j/ov<TiV,  o0i  ^avObt  'VaSanavOvi, 
TJjirep  prjtvTri  /Siottj  ttcAei  ai>8putiT0i(nv 
oil  viijxTbi,  out'  ap  xci/^ui'  ttoAus  ovre  ttot'  ouPpot, 
oAA'  alti  74C<j)vpoio  Myv  Trvei'oi'Tos  aijra; 
'[iKeavhi  a.i>iT]<Ti,v  aua\pv\eiv  avSptonovi. 

Odyssey,  iv.  5C3. 

Since  Horace's  time  (Epod.  vi.  41-GG)  the  Canary  islands  have 
been  a  favourite  theme  for  poets.  It  was  here  that  Tasso  placed 
the  loves  of  Rinaldo  and  Armida,  in  the  delicious  garden  where 

Vezzosi  augelli  infra  le  verde  f  ronde 
Temprano  a  prova  lascivette  note. 
Mormora  1'  aura,  e  fa  le  foglie  e  1'  onde 
Garrii',  cbe  variamente  ella  percote. 

Oerutalemme  lAberaia,  xtL  12, 


H 


304  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

Mela  knew  less  than  Ptolemy  a  century  later,  but 
Views  of  ®f  *^6  Atlantic  coast  he  knew  more  than 

Me'iarcir"       Ptolcmy.      The   fact   that  the   former 
A.  D.  50.  geographer  was  a  native  of  Spain  and 

the  latter  a  native  of  Egypt  uo  doubt  had  some- 


Ofc«. 


«     «      M     « 


thing  to  do  with  this.  Mela  had  profited  by  the 
Carthaginian  discoveries.  His  general  conception 
of  the  earth  was  .  abstantially  that  of  Eratosthe- 
nes.    It  was  what  has  been  styled  the  "  oceanic  " 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


805 


theory,  in  contrast  with  the  "  continental  "  theory 
of  Ptolemy.  In  the  unvisited  regions  on  all  sides 
of  the  known  world  Eratosthenes  imagined  vast 
oceans,  Ptolemy  imagined  vast  deserts  or  impene- 
trable swamps.  The  former  doctrine  was  of  course 
much  more  favourable  to  maritime  enterprise  than 
the  latter.  The  works  of  Ptolemy  exercised  over 
the  mediaeval  mind  an  almost  despotic  sway, 
which,  in  spite  of  their  many  merits,  was  in  some 
respects  a  hindrance  to  progress ;  so  that,  inasmuch 
as  the  splendid  work  of  Strabo,  the  most  eminent 
follower  of  Eratosthenes,  was  unknown  to  mediae- 
val Europe  until  about  1450,  it  was  fortunate  that 
the  Latin  treatise  of  Mela  was  generally  read  and 
highly  esteemed.  People  in  those  days  were  such 
uncritical  readers  that  very  likely  the  antagonism 
between  Ptolemy  and  Mela  may  have  failed  to 
excite  comment,^  especially  in  view  of  the  lack  of 
suitable  maps  such  as  emphasize  that  antagonism 
to  our  modem  minds.  But  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, when  men  were  getting  their  first  inklings  of 
critical  scholarship,  and  when  the  practical  ques- 
tion of  an  ocean  voyage  to  Asia  was  pressing  for 
solution,  such  a  point  could  no  longer  fail  to  at- 
tract attention  ;  and  it  happened  fortunately  that 
the  wet  theory,  no  less  than  the  dry  theory,  had  a 
popular  advocate  among  those  classical  authors  to 
whose  authority  so  much  deference  was  paid. 

^  Just  as  our  grandfathers  used  to  read  the  Bible  without  no- 
ticing' such  points  as  the  divergences  between  the  books  of  Kings 
and  Chronicles,  the  contradictions  between  the  genealogies  of 
Jesus  in  Matthew  and  Luke,  the  radically  different  theories  of 
t'hrist's  personality  and  career  iu  the  Fourth  Qospel  as  compared 
with  the  three  Synoptics,  eto. 


^WW 


806 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


If  the  Portuguese  mariners  of  the  generation 
before  Columbus  had  acquiesced  in  Ptolemy's  views 
as  final,  they  surely  would  not  have  devoted  their 
energies  to  the  task  of  circumnavigating  Africa. 
But  there  were  yet  other  theoretical  or  fanciful 
obstacles  in  the  way.  When  you  look  at  a  mod- 
ern map  of  the  world,  the  "five  zones"  may  seem 
like  a  mere  graphic  device  for  marking  conven-. 
ientlv  the  relations  of  different  regions 

Ancient  the-  •'  o 

ory  of  the        to  the  solar  source  of    heat ;    but  be- 

flve  zones. 

fore  the  great  Portuguese  voyages  and 
the  epoch-making  third  voyage  of  Vespucius,  to  be 
described  hereafter,  a  discouraging  doctrine  was 
entertained  with  regard  to  these  zones.  Ancient 
travellers  in  Scythia  and  voyagers  to  "  Thule  "  — 
which  in  Ptolemy's  scheme  perhaps  meant  the 
Shetland  isles  ^  —  had  learned  something  of  Arctic 
phenomena.  The  long  winter  nights,^  the  snow 
and  ice,  and  the  bitter  winds,  made  a  deep  impres- 
sion upon  visitors  from  the  Mediterranean ;  ^  and 

^  Bunbury,  <^.  cit.  vol.  ii.  pp.  492,  527.  The  name  is  used  in 
different  geographical  senses  by  various  ancient  writers,  as  is  well 
shown  in  Lewis's  Astronomy  of  the  Ancients,  pp.  467-481. 

^  The  Romans,  at  least  by  the  first  century  A.  D.,  knew  also  of 
the  shortness  of  northern  nights  in  summer. 

Arma  quidem  ultra 
Littora  Invemae  promoyimus,  et  modo  captaa 
Orcadas,  ao  minima  coutentos  nocte  Britannos. 

Juvenal,  ii.  159. 

See  also  Pliny,  Hist.  Nat.,  iv.  30 ;  Martianus  Capella,  vi.  695 ; 
Achilles  Taaus,  xxxv. 

*  The  reader  will  remember  Virgil's  magnificent  description  ol 
a  Scythian  winter  {Georg.,  iii.  352) :  — 

niic  clausa  tenent  stabulis  armenta  ;  neque  uUsa 
Aut  berbsB  campo  apparent,  aut  arbore  f rondos : 
Bed  jacet  aggeribua  nireiB  informia,  et  alto 
Terra  gelu  late,  aeptemque  assurgit  in  ulnoa  { 


THE  SEARCH  FOB  THE  INDIES. 


307 


when  such  facts  were  contrasted  with  the  scorch- 
ing blasts  that  came  from  Sahara,  the  resulting 
theory  was  undeniably  plausible.  In  the  extreme 
north  the  ocean  must  be  frozen  and  the  country 
uninhabitable  by  reason  of  the  cold ;  contrariwise, 
in  the  far  south  the  ocean  must  be  boiling  hot 
and  the  country  inhabitable  only  by  gnomes  and 
salamanders.  Applying  these  ideas  to  the  con- 
ception of  the  earth  as  a  sphere,  Pomponiua  Mela 
tells  us  that  the  surface  of  the  sphere  is  divided 
into  five  zones,  of  which  only  two  are  fit  to  sup- 
port human  life.  About  each  pole  stretcher  a 
dead  and  frozen  zone ;  the  southern  and  northern 
hemispheres  have  each  a  temperate  zone,  with  the 
same  changes  of  seasons,  but  not  occurring  at  the 

Semper  hiems,  semper  spirantes  frigora  Cauri. 
Turn  Sol  pallentes  haud  unquam  diacutit  umbras ; 
Nee  cum  invectus  equis  altum  petit  aethera,  nee  cum 
Preeeipitem  Oceani  rubro  lavit  sequore  currum. 
Concrescunt  subit^e  current!  in  ilumine  crust% ; 
Undaque  jam  tergo  ferratos  suBtinet  orbes, 
Puppibus  ilia  prius  patulis,  nimc  hospita  plaustris, 
^raque  dissiliunt  vulgo,  vestesque  rigeseunt 
IndutsB,  cteduntque  securibus  humida  viua 
Et  totie  solidam  in  glaciem  vertgre  lacunae, 
Stiriaque  impexis  induruit  horrida  barbis. 
Interea  toto  non  secius  aere  ningit ; 
Intereunt  pecudes  ;  stant  circumfusa  pruinig 
Corpora  magna  boum  ;  confertoque  agmine  cervi 
Torpent  mole  nova,  et  summls  vix  cornibua  exstant. 


Ipsi  in  defoBsis  speeubus,  secura  sub  alta 
Otia  agunt  terra,  congestaqae  robora,  totasque 
Advolvere  focis  ulmos,  ignique  dedere. 
•        Hie  noctem  ludo  ducunt,  et  pocula  loeti 

Fermento  atque  acidia  imitantur  vitea  sorbin. 
Talis  Hyperboreo  Septem  subjecta  trioni  • 

Gens  eHraena  virflm  Rhipseo  tunditur  Euro, 
Et  pecudum  fulvis  velantur  corpora  sautis. 

The  Roman  conception  of  the  situation  of  these  "  Hyperbore- 
ans "  and  of  the  Rhipsean  mountains  may  be  seen  in  the  map  of 
Mela's  world. 


<l 


308  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

same  (but  opposite)  times;  the  north  temperate 
zone  Is  the  seat  of  the  CEcumene  CoIkov 

rhe  Inhabited  x    i     i  •       i    ftr      i  i         i  i 

World  and  the  fievT}),  OF  inhabited  World;  the  south 

Antipodes.  "^  •         i        •    i     i  •       i  i  i 

temperate  zone  is  also  inhabited  by  the 
Antlchthones  or  Antipodes,  but  about  these  people 
we  know  nothing,  because  between  us  and  them 
there  intervenes  the  burning  zone,  which  it  is  im- 
possible to  cross.i 

This  notion  of  an  antipodal  world  in  the  south- 
ern hemisphere  will  have  especial  interest  for  us 
when  we  come  to  deal  with  the  voyages  of  Ves- 
puclus.  The  idea  seems  to  have  originated  in  a 
guess  of  Hipparchus  that  Taprobane  —  the  island 
of  Ceylon,  about  which  the  most  absurd  reports 
were  brought  to  Europe  —  might  be  the  beginning 
of  another  world.  This  is  very  probable,  says 
Mela,  with  delightful  naivete^  because  Taprobane 
is  Inhabited,  and  still  we  do  not  know  of  anybody 
who  has  ever  made  the  tour  of  it.^     Mela's  con- 

1  "  Hum  medio  terra  sublimis  cingitur  nndique  mari  :  eodem- 
que  in  duo  latera,  quae  hemisphseria  nominantur,  ab  oriente 
divisa  ad  occasum,  zotiis  quinque  distingnitur.  Mediam  aestua 
infcstat,  frigus  ultimas:  reliqu^e  habitabiles  paria  agunt  anni 
tempora,  verum  non  pariter.  Antichthones  alteram,  nos  alteram 
incolimus.  Illius  situ  ab  ardorem  intercedentis  plagse  incognito, 
hujus  dicendus  est,"  etc.  De  Situ  Orbis,  i.  1.  A  similar  theory 
is  set  forth  by  Ovid  (Metamorph. ,  i.  45),  and  by  Virgil  {Georg.,  L 

233) :  — 

Quinque  tenant  coelum  zonro  ;  quarum  una  coruaco 
Semper  Sole  rubens,  et  torrida  semper  ab  igni ; 
Quam  circum  extremae  dextra  laevaque  trahuntur, 
Cierulea  glacie  concretae  atque  imbribus  atris. 
Has  inter  mediamque,  duae  mortalibus  aegris 
Munere  concessre  DivQin  ;  et  via  secta  per  ambas, 
Obliquus  qua  Be  signorum  verteret  ordo. 

'  "  Taprobane  aut  grandis  admodum  insula  aut  prima  r  ars  or» 
bis  alterius  Hipparcho  dieitur  ;  sed  quia  habitata,  nee  oaisquani 
circummeasse  traditur,  prope  verum  est."     De  Situ  Orbis,  iii.  7* 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES.  309 

temporary,  the  elder  Pliny,  declares  that  Taprobane 
"  has  lonff  been  regarded "  as  part  of 

,  ,       Curious  no* 

another  world,  the   name  of  which  is  tions  about 

j-\  •  Ceylon. 

Antichthon,  or  Opposite-Earth ;  ^  at  the 
same  time  Pliny  vouchsafes  three  closely-printed 
pages  of  information  about  this  mysterious  coun- 
try. Throughout  the  Middle  Ages  the  conception 
of  some  sort  of  an  antipodal  inhabited  world  was 
vaguely  entertained  by  writers  here  and  there,  but 
many  of  the  clergy  condemned  it  as  implying  the 
existence  of  people  cut  off  from  the  knowledge  of 
the  gospel  and  not  included  in  the  plan  of  salva- 
tion. 

As  to  the  possibility  of  crossing  the  torrid  zone, 
opinion  was  not  unanimous.  Greek  explorers 
from  Alexandria  (cir.  b.  c.  100)  seem  to  have 
gone  far  up  the  Nile  toward  the  equator,  and  the 
astronomer  Geminus  quotes  their  testimony  in 
proof  of  his  opinion  that  the  torrid  zone  is  inhab- 
itable.^     Panaitius,   the   friend   of    the    younger 

Scipio  Africanus,  had  already  expressed  a  similar  '• 

opinion.  But  the  flaming  theory  prevailed.  Ma- 
crobius,  writing  about  six  hundred  years  later, 
maintained  that  the  southernmost  limit  of  the  halv 
itable  earth  was  850  miles  south  of  Syene,  which 
lies  just  under  the  tropic  of  Cancer.^  Beyond  this 
point  no  man  could  go  without  danger  from  the 

^  "  Taprobanen  alterum  orbem  terranim  esse,  diu  exiatima- 
tum  est,  Antichthonum  appellatione."    Hist.  Nat.,  vi.  24. 

^  Geminus,  Isagoge,  cap.  13. 

^  Maerobius,  Somnium  Scipionis,  ii.  8.  Strabo  (ii.  5,  §§  7,  8) 
sets  the  sf)uthern  boundary  of  the  Inliabited  World  800  miles 
south  of  iSyene,  and  the  northern  boundary  at  the  north  of  Ire- 
iand. 


.1' 


310  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

fiery  atmosphere.  Beyond  some  such  latitude  o\ 
The  flery  ^^^  oceau  uo  ship  could  venture  withou^ 
zone.  j.jgjj.  q£  ][)(3ijjg  euguKed  in  some  steam 

ing  whirlpool.^  Such  was  the  common  belief  beforts 
the  great  voyages  of  the  Portuguese. 

Besides  this  dread  of  the  burning  zone,  another 
fanciful  obstacle  beset  the  mariner  who  proposed 
to  undertake  a  long  voyage  upon  the  outer  ocean. 
It  had  been  observed  that  a  ship  which  disappears 
in  the  offing  seems  to  be  going  downhill ;  and 
many  people  feared  that  if  they  should  happen  thus 
to  descend  too  far  away  from  the  land  they  could 
Going  down-  ncvcr  get  back  again.  Men  accustomed 
^'"'  to  inland  sea  travel  did   not  feel  this 

dread  within  the  regions  of  which  they  had  experi- 
ence, but  it  assailed  them  whenever  they  thought 
of  braving  the  mighty  waters  outside.^     Thus  the 

^  Another  notion,  less  easily  explicable  and  less  commonly 
entertained,  but  interesting  for  its  literary  associations,  was 
the  notion  of  a  mountain  of  loadstone  in  the  Indian  ocean,  which 
prevented  access  to  the  torrid  zone  by  drawing  the  nails  from 
ships  and  thus  wrecking  them.  This  imaginary  mountain,  with 
j  some  variations   in  the  description,  is  made  to  caiTy  a  serious 

geographical  argument  by  the  astrologer  Pietro  d'  Abano,  in  his 
book  Conciliator  Differentiarum,  written  about  1312.  (See  Major, 
Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,  p.  100.)  It  plays  an  important  part 
in  one  of  the  finest  tal^s  in  the  Arabian  N  ights,  —  the  story  of 
the  "  Third  Royal  Mendicant." 

^  Ferdinand  Columbus  tells  us  that  this  objection  was  urged 
against  the  Portuguese  captains  and  .afterwards  against  his 
father:  "  E  altri  di  ci6  quasi  cosi  disputavano,  come  gi^  i  Porto- 
ghesi  intorno  al  navigare  in  Guinea  ;  dicendo  die,  se  si  allargasse 
alcuno  a  far  cammino  diritto  al  oecidente,  come  1'  Ammiraglio 
diceva,  non  potrebbe  poi  tornare  in  Ispagna  per  la  rotondith,  della 
sfera  ;  tenendo  per  certissime,  die  qualunque  uscisse  dd  emisije- 
rio  conosciuto  da  Tolomeo,  auderebbe  in  giii,  e  poi  gli  sarebbe 
impossibile  dar  la  volta ;  e  affermaudo  che  cio  sarebbe  quasi  una 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


311 


master  mariner,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  might  con- 
template the  possible  chance  of  being  drawn  by- 
force  of  gravity  into  the  fiery  gulf,  jhould  he 
rashly  approach  too  near  ;  and  in  such  misgivings 
he  would  be  confirmed  by  Virgil,  who  was  as  much 
read  then  as  he  is  to-day  and  esteemed  an  author- 
ity, withal,  on  scientific  questions  ;  for  according 
to  Virgil  the  Inhabited  World  descends  toward 
the  equator  and  has  its  apex  in  the  extreme  north.^ 
To  such  notions  as  these,  which  were  supposed 
to  have  some  sort  of  scientific  basis,  we  must  add 
the  wild  superstitious  fancies  that  clustered  about 
all  remote  and  un visited  corners  of  the  world.  In 
maps  made  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centu- 
ries, in  such  places  as  we  should  label  "  Unex- 
plored Region,"  there  were  commonly  de^  L^ed 
uncouth  shapes  of  "  Gorgons  and  Hydras  and  Chi- 

ascendere  all'  insii  di  un  monto.  II  clie  non  potrebhono  fare  i 
navig'li  con  grandissimo  vento."  Vita  deW  Ammiraglio,  Venice, 
1571,  cap.  xii.  The  same  thing  is  told,  in  almost  the  same  words, 
by  Las  Casas,  since  both  writers  followed  the  same  original  docu- 
ments :  "  Aiiidian  mas,  que  quien  navegase  por  vfa  derecha  la 
vuelta  del  poniente,  como  el  Crist6bal  Colon  proferia,  no  podria 
despues  volver,  suponiendo  que  el  mundo  era  redondo  y  yendo 
hdcia  el  occidente  iban  cuesta  abajo,  y  saliendo  del  hemisf erio  que 
Ptolomeo  escribi6,  &  la  vuelta  ^rales  necesario  subir  cuesta  arriba, 
loque  los  navfos  eraimposible  hacer."  The  gentle  but  keen  sar- 
casn\  that  follows  is  very  characteristic  of  Las  Casas :  "  Esta  era 
gentil  y  profunda  razon,  y  seilal  de  liaber  bien  el  negocio  entendi- 
do  I  "     Uistoria  de  las  Indias,  torn.  i.  p.  230. 

1  Muiidus,  ut  ad  Scythiam  Rhipaeasque  arduus  arces 
CoDSurgit,  premitur  LibyiB  devexua  in  austros. 
Hie  vertex  nobis  semper  sublimis  ;  at  ilium 
Sub  pedibus  Styx  atra  videt  Manesque  profundi. 

Georg.,  i.  240. 

For  an  account  of  the  deference  paid  to  Virgil  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  as  well  aa  the  grotesque  fancies  about  him,  see  Tunison's 
Master  Virgil,  2d  ed.,  Cincinnati,  1890. 


fl 


I 


312 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


inaeras  dire,"  furnishing  eloquent  testimony  to  the 
feelings  with  which  the  unknown  was  regarded. 
Superstitious  ^he  barren  wastes  of  the  Sea  of  Dark- 
fancies.  jj^ggg  awakened  a  shuddering  dread  like 

that  with  which  children  shrink  from  the  gloom  of 
a  cellar.  When  we  remember  all  these  things,  and 
consider  how  the  intelligent  purpose  which  urged 
the  commanders  onward  was  scarcely  within  the 
comprehension  of  their  ignorant  and  refractory 
crews,  we  can  begin  to  form  some  idea  of  the  dif- 
ficulties that  confronted  the  brave  mariners  who 
first  sought  an  ocean  route  to  the  far-off  shores  of 
Cathay. 

Less  formidable  than  these  obstacles  based  on 
fallacious  reasoning  or  superstitious  whim  were 
those  that  were  furnished  by  the  clumsiness  of  the 
ships  and  the  crudeness  of  the  appliances  for 
navigation.  As  already  observed,  the  Spanish  and 
Portuguese  caravels  of  the  fifteenth  century  were 
Clumsiness  of  ^^^^  swift  and  manageable  craft  than 
the  caravels,  ^^le  Norwegian  "  dragons  "  of  the  tenth. 
Mere  yachts  in  size  we  should  call  them,  but  far 
from  yachtlike  in  shape  or  nimbleness.  With  their 
length  seldom  more  than  thrice  their  width  of 
beam,  with  narrow  tower-like  poops,  with  broad- 
shouldered  bows  and  bowsprit  weighed  down  with 
spritsail  yards,  and  with  no  canvas  higher  than  a 
topsail,  these  clumsy  caravels  could  make  but  lit- 
tle progress  against  headwinds,  and  the  amount 
of  tacking  and  beating  to  and  fro  was  sometimes 
enough  to  quadruple  the  length  of  the  voyage. 
For  want  of  metallic  sheathing  below  the  water- 
line  the  ship  was  liable  to  be  sunk  by  the  terrible 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


313 


worm  which,  in  Hakluyt's  phrase,  "  many  times 
pearceth  and  eateth  through  the  strongest  oake." 
For  want  of  vegetable  food  in  the  larder,  or  any- 
thing save  the  driest  of  bread  and  beef  stiffened 
with  brine,  the  sailors  were  sure  to  be  attacked  by 
scurvy,  and  in  a  very  long  voyage  the  crew  was 
deemed  fortunate  that  did  not  lose  half  its  num- 
ber from  that  foul  disease.  Often  in  traversing 
unknown  seas  the  sturdy  men  who  sur-  famine  and 
vived  all  other  perils  were  brought  ^"'"^y- 
face  to  face  with  starvation  when  they  had  ven- 
tured too  far  without  turning  back.^  We  need  not 
wonder  that  the  first  steps  in  oceanic  discovery 
were  slow  and  painful. 

First  among  the  instruments  without  which  sys- 
tematic ocean  navigation  would  have  been  impos- 
sible, the  magnetic  compass  had  been  introduced 
into  southern  Europe  and  was  used  by  xhe  mariner's 
Biscayan  and  Catalan  sailors  before  the  <=°™p*^- 
end  of  the  twelfth  century.^  Parties  of  Crusaders 
had  learned  the  virtues  of  the  suspended  needle 
from  the  Arabs,  who  are  said  to  have  got  their 
knowledge  indirectly  from  China  in  the  course  of 
their  eastern  voyages.^     It  seems   to  have   been 

^  Or  simply  because  a  wrong  course  happened  to  be  taken, 
through  ignorance  of  atmospheric  conditions,  as  in  the  second 
homeward  and  third  outward  voyages  of  Columbus.  See  below, 
pp.  485,  490. 

'■^  Navarrete,  Discurso  historico  sobre  los  progresos  del  arte  de 
navegar  en  Espaha,  p.  28 ;  see  also  Raymond  LuUy's  treatise, 
Librofelix,  d  Maravillas  del  mundo  (a.  d.  1286). 

*  See  Humboldt's  Kosmos,  bd.  i.  p.  294  ;  Klaproth,  Lettre  d.  M. 
de  Humboldt  sur  Vinvention  de  la  boussole,  pp.  41,  45,  50,  60,  79, 
90.  But  some  of  Klaproth's  conclusions  have  been  doubted  ; 
**Four  la  boussole,  rieu  ne  prouvo  que  les  Chinois  I'aient  em< 


u 


' 


814  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

a,t  Anialfi  that  the  needle  was  first  enclosed  in  a 
box  and  connected  with  a  graduated  comi)ass-card 
Apparently  it  had  not  come  into  general  use  in 
the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  for  in  1258 
the  famous  Brunetto  Latlni,  afterwards  tutor  of 
Dante,  made  a  visit  to  Roger  Bacon,  of  which  he 
gives  a  description  in  a  letter  to  his  friend  the 
poet  Guido  Cavalcanti :  "  The  Parliament  being 
summoned  to  assemble  at  Oxford,  I  did  not  fail  to 
see  Friar  Bacon  as  soon  as  I  arrived,  and  (among 
other  things)  he  showed  me  a  black  ugly  stone 
called  a  magnet,  which  has  the  surprising  property 
of  drawing  iron  to  it ;  and  upon  which,  if  a  needle 
be  rubbed,  and  afterwards  fastened  to  a  straw  so 
that  it  shall  swim  upon  water,  the  needle  will  in- 
stantly turn  toward  the  Pole-star:  therefore,  be 
the  night  ever  so  dark,  so  that  neither  moon  nor 
star  be  visible,  yet  shall  the  mariner  be  able,  by 
the  help  of  this  needle,  to  steer  his  vessel  aright. 
This  discovery,  which  appears  useful  in  so  great  a 
degree  to  all  who  travel  by  sea,  must  remain  con- 
cealed until  other  times  ;  because  no  master  mari- 
ner dares  to  use  it  lest  he  should  fall  under  the 
imputation  of  being  a  magician ;  nor  would  the 
sailors  venture  themselves  out  to  sea  under  his 
command,  if  he  took  with  him  an  instrument  which 
carries  so  great  an  appearance  of  being  constructed 
under  the  influence  of  some  infernal  spirit.^     A 

ploy^e  pour  la  navigation,  tandis  que  nous  la  trouvons  d^s  le  xi" 
si^cle  chez  les  Arabes  qui  s'en  servent  non  seulement  dans  leurs 
travers^es  maritimes,  mais  dans  les  voyages  de  caravanes  au 
milieu  des  deserts,"  etc.  S^dillot,  Ilistoire  des  Arabes,  torn.  iL 
p.  130. 

1  Is  it  not  a  curious  instance  of  human  perversity  that  whila 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


315 


time  may  arrive  when  these  prejudices,  which  are 
of  such  groat  hindrance  to  researches  into  the 
secrets  of  nature,  will  be  overcome ;  and  it  will 
be  then  that  mankind  shall  reap  the  benefit  of  the 
labours  of  such  learned  men  as  Friar  Bacon,  and 
do  justice  to  that  industry  and  intelligence  for 
which  he  and  they  now  meet  with  no  other  return 
than  obloquy  and  reproach."  ^ 

That  time  was  after  all  not  so  long  in  arriving, 
for  by  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  the  com- 
pass had  come  to  be  quite  generally  used,'^  and  the 
direction  of  a  ship's  course  could  be  watched  con- 
tinuously in  foul  and  fair  weather  alike.  For 
taking  the  sun's  altitude  rude  astrolabes  and  jack- 
staffs  were  in  use,  very  crazy  affairs  as  compared 
with  the  modern  quadrant,  but  sufficiently  accu- 
rate to  enable  a  well-trained  observer.  Latitude  and 
in  calculating  his  latitude,  to  get  some-  ^^^B'tu^e- 
where  within  two  or  three  degrees  of  the  truth. 
In  calculating  longitude  the  error  was  apt  to  be 
much  greater,  for  in  the  absence  of  chronometers 
there  were  no  accurate  means  for  marking  differ- 
ences in  time.  It  was  necessary  to  depend  upon  the 
dead-reckoning,  and  the  custom  was  first  to  sail 
due  north  or  south  to  the  parallel  of  the  place  of 
destination  and  then  to  turn  at  right  angles  and 

customary  usage  from  time  immemorial  has  characterized  as  "  acts 
of  God  "  such  horrible  events  as  famines,  pestilences,  and  earth- 
quakes, on  the  other  hand  when  some  purely  beneficent  invention 
has  appeared,  such  as  the  mariner's  compass  or  the  printing 
press,  it  has  commonly  been  accredited  to  the  Devil  ?  The  case 
of  Dr.  Faustua  is  the  most  familiar  example. 

^  This  version  is  cited  from  Major's  Prince  Henry  the  Naviga- 
or,  p.  58. 

*  Hiillmaim,  Stddtewesen  des  Mittelalters,  bd.  i.  pp.  125-137. 


816  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA.  ' 

sail  due  east  or  west.  Errors  of  eight  or  even  ten 
degrees  were  not  uncommon.  Thus  at  the  end  of 
a  long  outward  voyage  the  ship  might  find  itself 
a  hundred  miles  or  more  to  the  north  or  south,  and 
six  or  seven  hundred  miles  to  the  east  or  west,  of 
the  point  at  which  it  had  been  aimed.  Under  all 
these  difficulties,  the  approximations  made  to  cor- 
rect sailing  by  the  most  skilful  mariners  were  some- 
times wonderful.  Doubtless  this  very  poverty  of 
resources  served  to  sharpen  their  watchful  sagacity.^ 
To  sail  the  seas  was  in  those  days  a  task  requiring 
high  mental  equipment ;  it  was  no  work  for  your 
commonplace  skipper.  Human  faculty  was  taxed 
to  its  utmost,  and  human  courage  has  never  been 
more  grandly  displayed  than  by  the  glorious  sail- 
ors of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. 

We  are  now  prepared  to  appreciate  the  charac- 
ter of  the  work  that  was  done  in  the  course  of  the 
1 1  first  attempts  to  find  an  oceanic  route  from  Europe 

to  Asia.    Then,  as  in  other  great  epochs 

Prince  Henry        i?  i  •  j^  j?  •  ,  , 

theNavifcator,  of  history,  men  of  genius  arose  to  meet 

the  occasion.    In  1394  was  born  Prince 

Henry  of   Portugal,  since  known  as  Henry  the 

Navigator.2     He  was  fourth  son  of  King  John  I., 

^  Compare  the  remarks  of  Mr.  Clark  Russell  on  the  mariners 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  in  his  William  Dumpier,  p.  12. 

^  My  chief  authorities  for  the  achievements  of  Prince  Henry 
and  his  successors  are  the  Portuguese  historians,  Barros  and  Azu° 
rara.  The  best  edition  of  the  former  is  a  modem  one,  Barros  y 
I  Couto,  Decadas  da  Asia,  nova  edicao  con  Indice  geral,  Lisbon, 

1778-88,  24  vols.  12mo.  I  also  refer  sometimes  to  the  Lisbon, 
1752,  edition  of  the  Decada  primeira,  in  folio.  The  priceless  con- 
temporary work  of  Azurara,  written  in  1453  under  Prince  Henry's 
direction,  was  not  printed  until  the  present  century:  Azurara, 


■"'.V 


'^^^^ 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


317 


the  valiant  and  prudent  king  under  whom  began 
the  gohlen  age  of  Portugal,  which  lasted  until  the 
conquest  of  that  country  in  1580  by  Piiilip  II.  of 
Spain.  Henry's  mother  was  Philippa,  daughter 
of  John  of  Gaunt.  He  was  therefore  cousin  to 
our  own  Henry  V.  of  I^ngland,  whom  he  quite 
equalled  in  genius,  while  the  laurels  that  he  won 
were  more  glorious  than  those  of  Agincourt  In 
1415,  being  then  in  his  twenty-first  year,  Prince 
Henry  played  a  distinguished  part  in  the  expe- 
dition which  captured  Ceuta  from  the  Moors. 
While  in  Morocco  he  gathered  such  information 
as  he  could  concerning  the  interior  of  the  conti- 
nent ;  he  learned  something  about  the  oases  of 
Sahara,  the  distant  river  Gambia,  and  the  caravan 
trade  between  Tunis  and  Timbuctoo,  whereby  gold 
was  carried  from  the  Guinea  coast  to  Mussulman 
ports  on  the  Mediterranean.  If  this  coast  could 
be  reached  by  sea,  its  gold  might  be  brought  to 
Lisbon  as  well.  To  divert  such  treasure  from  the 
infidel  and  secure  it  for  a  Christian  nation  was  an 
enterprise  fitted  to  kindle  a  prince's  enthusiasm. 
While  Henry  felt  the  full  force  of  these  consid- 
erations, his  thoughts  took  a  wider  range.  The 
views  of  Pomponius  Mela  had  always  been  held  in 
high  esteem  by  scholars  of  the  Spanish  peninsula,* 
and  down  past  that  Gold  Coast  Prince  Henry  saw 

Chronica  do  Descohrimento  e  Conquista  de  Guin^,  Paris,  1841,  a 
superb  edition  in  royal  quarto,  edited  by  the  Viscount  ia  Car- 
reira.  with  introduction  and  notes  by  the  Viscount  de  St<  ntarem. 

^  Partly,  perhaps,  because  Mela  was  himself  a  Spaniard,  and 
partly  because  his  opinions  had  been  shared  and  supported  by  St. 
Isidore,  of  Seville  (a.  d.  57(M>3()),  whose  learned  works  exercised 
jjumense  authority  throughout  the  Middle  Ages.     It  ia  in  oae  of 


II 


i'  I  ;i 


,   ii 


■  m 


0 


I 


W' 


318  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

the  ocean  route  to  the  Indies,  the  road  whereby 
Hifl  idea  of  an  *  ^^^*  empire  might  be  won  for  Portu- 
ocean  route  to  gal  and  millions  of  wandering  heathen 

the  Indies,  and    "  _  o 

what  it  might  souls  might  be  gathered  into  the  fold 
of  Christ.  To  doubt  the  sincerity  of 
the  latter  motive,  or  to  belittle  its  influence,  would 
be  to  do  injustice  to  Prince  Henry,  —  such  cynical 
injustice  as  our  hard-headed  age  is  only  too  apt 
to  mete  out  to  that  romantic  time  and  the  fresh 
enthusiasm  which  inspired  its  heroic  performances. 
Prince  Henry  was  earnest,  conscientious,  large- 
minded,  and  in  the  best  sense  devout ;  and  there 
can  be  no  question  that  in  his  mind,  as  in  that  of 
Columbus,  and  (wjth  somewhat  more  alloy)  in  the 
minds  of  Cortes  and  others,  the  desire  of  converting 
the  heathen  and  strengthening  the  Church  served 
as  a  most  powerful  incentive  to  the  actions  which 
in  the  course  of  little  more  than  a  century  quite 
changed  the  f?.ce  of  the  world. 

FiLed  with  such  lofty  and  generous  thoughts. 
Prince  Henry,  on  his  return  from  Morocco,  in 
1418,  chose  for  himself  a  secluded  place  of  abode 
where  he  could  devote  himself  to  his  purposes  un- 
disturbed by  the  court  life  at  Lisbon  or  by  political 
solicitations  of  whatever  sort.  In  the  Morocco 
campaign  he  had  won  such  military  renown  that 
he  was  now  invited  by  Pope  Mivrtin  V.  to  take 
chief  command  of  the  papal  army  ;  and  ^'•esently 
he  received  similar  flattering  offers  from  his  own 
cousin,  Henry  V.  of  England,  from  John  II.  of 

St.  Isidore's  books  (Etymologiarum,  xiii.  10,  apnd  Migne,  Patro- 
logia,  torn.  Ixxxii.  col.  48 1)  that  we  first  find  the  word  ' '  Mediterr» 
nean  "  i;  "id  as  a  proper  name  f  >r  that  great  laud-locked  sea. 


THE  iiEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


319 


Castile,  and  from  the  Emperor  SIgismund,  who, 
for  shamefully  violating  his  imperial  word  and 
permitting  the  burning  of  John  Huss,  was  now 
sorely  pressed  by  the  enraged  and  rebellious  Bohe- 
mians. Such  invitations  had  no  charm  for  Henry. 
Refusing  them  one  and  all,  he  retired  to  the  pro- 
montory of  Sagres,  in  the  southernmost  jv,  s^creA 
province  of  Portugal,  the  ancient  king-  Pro™o"*o'y- 
dom  of  Algarve,  of  which  his  father  now  appointed 
him  governor.  That  lonely  and  barren  rock,  pro- 
truding into  the  ocean,  had  long  ago  impressed  the 
imagination  of  Greek  and  Roman  writers  ;  they 
called  it  the  Sacred  Promontory,  and  supposed  it 
to  be  the  westernmost  limit  of  the  habitable  earth.^ 
There  the  young  prince  proceeded  to  build  an 
astronomical  observatory,  the  first  that  his  country 
had  ever  seen,  and  to  gather  about  him  a  school  of 
men  competent  to  teach  and  men  eager  to  learn 
the  mysteries  of  map-making  and  the  art  of  navi- 
gation. There  he  spent  the  greater  part  of  his 
life ;  thence  he  sent  forth  his  captains  to  plough 
the  southern  seas ;  and  as  year  after  year  the 
weather-beaten  sliips  returned  from  their  venture- 
some pilgrimage,  the  first  glimpse  of  home  that 
greeted  them  was  likely  to  be  the  beacon-light  in 
the  tower  where  the  master  sat  poring  over  prob- 
lems of  Archimedes  or  watching  the  stars.  For 
Henry,  whose  motto  was  "  Talent  de  blen  faire," 
or  (in  the  old  French  usage)  "  Desire^  to  do  well,'* 

^  'Oyuofws  Se  Koi  Trepl  rrji  t^w  (TT-qKuv  \e'yeTai  •  SvafUKuirarov  fiiv 
yiip  (TTJixelov  TT/s  oiKOVfxfvris,  rh  twu  'ipiipooi'  aKpasTripiou,  t  Ka\ov(Ti» 
1(p6y.  JStrabo,  ii.  5,  §  ii;  ct".  Dionjsius  Periegetes,  v.  161.  In 
reality  it  lies  not  quite  so  far  west  aa  the  conntry  ai'ouud  Lisbon. 
^   *  See  Littr^,  Dictionnaire,  s.  v.  "  Talent;  "  Du  Caugo,  Glossa- 


II 


M 


ii 


820  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


was  wont  to  throw  himself  whole-hearted  into 
whatever  he  undertook,  and  the  study  of  astron- 
omy and  mathematics  he  pursued  so  zealously  as 
to  reach  a  foremost  place  among  the  experts  of  his 
time.  With  such  tastes  and  such  ambition,  he 
was  singularly  fortunate  in  wielding  ample  pecu- 
niary resources ;  if  such  a  combination  could  be 

ill  more  often  realized,  the  welfare  of  mankind  would 

be  notably  enhanced.  Prince  Henry  was  Grand 
Master  of  the  Order  of  Christ,  an  organization 
hnlf  military,  half  religious,  and  out  of  its  abundant 
revenues  he  made  the  appropriations  needful  for 
the  worthy  purpose  of  advancing  the  interests  of 

:    .  science,  converting  the  heathen,  and   winning  a 

commercial  empire  for  Portugal.     At  first  he  had 
•         to  encounter  the  usual  opposition  to  lavish  expen- 
diture for  a  distant  object  without  hope  of  imme- 

II  diate  returns  ;  but  after  a  while  his  dogged  perse- 

li'l  verance  began  to  be  rewarded  with  such  successes 

as  to  silence  all  adverse  comment. 

The  first  work  in  hand  was  the  rediscovery  of 
coasts  and  islands  that  had  ceased  to  be  visited 
even  before  the  breaking  up  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire. For  more  than  a  thousand  years  the  Ma- 
deiras and  Canaries  had  been  wellnigh 
and  Canary  forgottcu,  and  upou  the  coast  of  the 
African  continent  no  ship  ventured  be- 
yond Cape  Non,  the  headland  so  named  because 
it  said  "  No !  "  to  the  wistful   mariner.^     There 

rtum,  "  talentum,  aninii  decretura,  voluntas,  deaiderium,  cxipidi- 
tas,"  etc. ;  ef.  Raynouard,  Glossaire  Proveni^ale,  torn.  v.  p.  2S)I). 
Froncli  waa  then  fashionable  at  court,  in  Lisbon  as  well  as  in 
London. 

^  The  Portuguese  proverb  was  "  Quem  passar  o  Cabo  de  N2o 


:!li!l 


I't'' 


S,i 


i. 


THE  SEARCH  FOE  THE  INDIES. 


321 


had  been  some  re-awakening  of  maritime  activity 
in  the  course  of  the  fourteenth  century,  chiefly 
due,  no  doubt,  to  the  use  of  the  compass.  Be- 
tween 1317  and  1351  certain  Portuguese  ships, 
with  Genoese  pilots,  had  visited  not  only  the  Ma- 
deiras and  Canaries,  but  even  the  Azores,  a  thou- 
sand miles  out  in  the  Atlantic ;  and  these  groups 
of  islands  are  duly  laid  down  upon  the  so-called 
Medici  map  of  1351,  preserved  in  the  Laurentian 
library  at  Florence.^  The  voyage  to  the  Azores 
was  probably  the  greatest  feat  of  ocean  navigation 
that  had  been  performed  down  to  that  time,  but  it 
was  not  followed  by  colonization.  Again,  some- 
where about  1377  Madeira  seems  to  have  been 
visited  by  Robert  Machin,  an  Englishman,  whose 
adventures  make  a  most  romantic  story ;  and  in 
1402  the  Norman  knight,  Jean  de  Bethencourt, 
had  begun  to  found  a  colony  in  the  Canaries,  for 
which,  in  return  for  aid  and  supplies,  he  did  hom- 
age to  the  King  of  Castile.'^    As  for  the  African 

oil  voltarA  on  n3o"  i.  e.  "  Whoever  passes  Cape  Non  will  return 
or  not.''''  See  Las  Cassis,  Hist,  de  las  Indias,  torn.  i.  p.  178  ;  Ma- 
riana, Hist,  de  Espaha,  toni.  i.  p.  01 ;  Barros,  torn.  i.  p.  30. 

^  An  engraved  copy  of  tJiis  map  may  be  found  in  Major's 
Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,  London,  18(58,  facing  p.  107.  I  need 
hardly  say  that  in  all  that  relates  to  the  Portuguese  voyages  I 
am  under  great  obligation  to  Mr.  Major's  profoundly  learned  and 
critical  researches.  He  has  fairly  conquered  this  subject  and 
made  it  his  own,  and  whoever  touclies  it  after  him,  however 
lightly,  must  always  owe  him  a  triburt  of  acknowledgment. 

'^  See  Bontier  and  Le  Verrier,  The  Canarian,  or,  Hook  of  the 
Conquest  and  Conversion  of  the  Canaries,  translated  and  edited 
by  R.  H.  Major,  London,  1872  (ILiklnyt  Soc).  Li  1414,  B^- 
thencourt's  nephew,  left  in  charge  of  these  islands,  sold  them  to 
Prince  Henry,  but  Castile  persisted  in  claiming  them,  and  at 
length  in  1470  her  claim  was  recognized  by  treaty  with  PortugaL 


II 


.^ 


322  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

coast,  Cape  Non  had  also  been  passed  at  some  time 
during  the  fourteenth  century,  for  Cape  Bojador 
iiil  is  laid  down  on  the  Catalan  map  of  1375  ;  but  be- 

yond that  point  no  one  had  dared  take  the  risks  of 
the  unknown  sea. 

If  The   first   achievement    under   Prince   Henri's 

III}  .  .  . 

1 1  guidance  was  the  final  rediscovery  and  coloniza- 


ilf 


id 


i 


!Ji 


tion  of  Porto  Santo  and  Madeira  in  1418-25  by 
Gonsalvez  Zarco,  Tristam  Vaz,  and  Bartholomew 
Perestrelo,^  This  work  occupied  the  prince's  at- 
tention for  some  years,  and  then  came  up  the  prob- 
lem of  Cape  Bojador.    The  difficulty  was  twofold  ; 

Of  all  the  African  islands,  therefore,  the  Canaries  alone  came  to 
belong,  and  still  belong,  to  Spain. 

^  Perestrelo  had  with  him  a  female  rabbit  which  littered  on 
the  voyage,  and  being  landed,  with  her  young,  at  Porto  Santo, 
forthwith  illustrated  the  fearful  rate  of  multiplication  of  which 
organisms  are  capable  in  the  absence  of  enemies  or  other  adverse 
circumstances  to  check  it.  (Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  chap,  iii.) 
These  rabbits  swarmed  all  over  the  island  and  devoured  every 
green  and  succulent  thing,  insomuch  that  they  came  near  convert- 
ing it  into  a  desert.  Prince  Henry's  enemies,  who  were  vexed 
at  the  expenditure  of  money  in  such  colonizing  enterprises,  were 
thus  furnished  with  a  wonderful  argument.  They  maintained 
that  God  had  evidently  created  those  islands  for  beasts  alone,  not 
for  men  !  "  En  este  tiempo  habia  en  todo  Portugal  grandisimas 
murmuraciones  del  Infante,  vi^ndole  tan  cudicioso  y  poner  tanta 
diligencia  en  el  descubrir  de  h;  tierra  y  costa  de  Africa,  diciendo 
que  destruia  el  reino  en  los  gastos  que  hacia,  y  consumia  los  veci- 
nos  d^l  en  poner  en  tanto  peligro  y  dafio  la  gente  portoguesa, 
donde  muchos  niorian,  envidndolos  en  demanda  de  tierras  que 
nunca  los  reyes  de  Espaiia  pasados  se  atrevieron  &  emprender, 
do)  Je  habia  de  hacer  muehas  viudas  y  hu^rfanos  con  esta  su  por- 
fia.  Tomaban  per  argnmento,  que  Dios  no  habia  criado  aquellas 
tierras  sino  para  bestias,  pues  en  tan  poco  tiempo  en  aquella  isla 
tantos  conejos  habia  wultiplicado,  que  no  dejaban  cosa  que  para 
austentacion  de  los  hombres  fuese  menester."  Las  Casas,  Hist 
de  las  Indias,  torn.  i.  p.  180.  See  also  Azuiara,  Chronica  da 
descohrimento  e  conquista  de  Guin^,  cap.  Ixxxiii. 


S 


THE  SEARCH  FOE  THE  INDIES. 


323 


the  waves  about  that  headland  were  apt  to  be  boisv 
terous,  and  wild  sailor's  fancies  were  apt  to  enkin- 
dle a  mutinous  spirit  in  the  crews.     It 
was  not  until  1433-35  that  Gil  Eannes,  passes  cape 
U/  commander  of  unusually  clear  head 
and  steady  nerves,  made  three  attempts  and  fairly 
passed  the  dreaded  spot.     In  the  first  attempt  he 
failed,  as  his  predecessors  had  done,  to  double  the 
cape ;  in  the  second  attempt  he  doubled  it ;  in  the 
third  he  sailed  nearly  two  hundred  miles  beyond. 

This  achievement  of  Gil  Eannes  (anglice,  plain 
Giles  Jones)  marks  an  era.  It  was  the  beginning 
of  great  things.  When  we  think  of  the  hesita- 
tion with  which  this  step  was  taken,  and  the  vocif- 
erous applause  that  greeted  the  successful  captain,^ 
it  is  strange  to  reflect  that  babes  were  already 
born  in  1435  who  were  to  live  to  hear  of  the  pro- 
digious voyages  of  Columbus  and  Gama,  Vespu 
cius  and  Magellan.  After  seven  years  a  further 
step  was  taken  in  advance  ;  in  1442  Antonio  Gon- 
<;alves  brought  gold  and  negro  slaves  Beginning  of 
from  the  Rio  d'  Ouro,  or  Rio  del  Oro,  ^iT^eTSe" 
four  himdred  miles  beyond  Cape  Boja-  ^**"" 
dor.  Of  this  beginning  of  the  modern  slave-trade 
I  shall  treat  in  a  future  chapter.^  Let  it  suffice 
here  to  observe  that  Prince  Henry  did  not  discour- 
age but  sanctioned  it.  The  first  aspect  which  this 
baleful  traffic  assumed  in  his  mind  was  that  of  a 
means  for  converting  the  heathen,  by  bringing  black 
men  and  women  to  Portugal  to  be  taught  the  true 
faith  and  the  ways  of  civilized  people,  that  they 
might  in  due  season  be  sent  back  to  their  native 
1  See  below,  vol.  ii.  pp.  429-431, 


M 


324 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


ii 


Ki 


ri 


Portuguese  voyages  on  the  coast  of  Africa. 

land  to  instruct  their  heathen  brethren.    The  kings 

of  Portugal  should  have  a  Christian  empire  in 
Africa,  and  in  course  of  time  the  good 

heathen  ooun-  work  might  bc  cxtcuded  to  the  Indies. 
Accordingly  a  special  message  was  sent 
to  Pope  Eugenius  IV.,  informing  him 

of  the  disco V3ry  of  the  country  of  these  barbar- 


tries  to  the 
Portuguese 
crown. 


n 


. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


325 


ous  people  beyond  the  limits  of  the  Mussulman 
world,  and  asking  for  a  grant  in  perpetuity  to 
Portugal  of  all  heathen  lands  that  might  be  dis- 
covered in  further  voyages  beyond  Cape  Bojador, 
even  so  far  as  to  include  the  Indies.^  The  request 
found  favour  in  the  eyes  of  Eugenius,  and  the 
grant  was  solemnly  confirmed  by  succeeding  popes. 
To  these  proceedings  we  shall  again  have  occasion 
to  refer.  We  have  here  to  observe  that  the  dis- 
covery of  gold  and  the  profits  of  the  slave-trade  — 
though  it  was  as  yet  conducted  upon  a  very  small 
scale  —  served  to  increase  the  interest  of  the  Por- 
tuguese people  in  Prince  Henry's  work  and  to 
diminish  the  obstacles  in  his  way.  A  succession 
of  gallant  captains,  whose  names  make  a  glorious 
roll  of  honour,  carried  on  the  work  of  exploration, 
reaching  the  farthest  point  that  had  been  attained 
by  the  ancients.     In  1445  Dinis  Fernandez  passed 

^  "  En  el  afio  de  1442,  viendo  el  Infante  que  se  habia  pasado  el 
cabo  del  Boxador  y  que  la  tierra  iba  rauy  adelante,  y  que  todos 
los  navfos  que  inviaba  traian  rauchos  esclavos  raoros,  con  que  pa- 
gaba  los  gasto3  que  hacia  y  que  cada  dia  crecia  mds  el  provecho 
y  se  prosperaba  su  amada  negociacion,  determin6  de  inviar  &  su- 

plicar  al  Papa  Martino  V que  liiciese  gracia  il  la  Corona 

real  de  Portogal  de  los  remos  y  seiloiios  que  liabia  y  hobiese 
f'esde  el  cabo  del  Boxador  adelante,  hdcia  el  Oriente  y  la  India 
inclusive  ;  y  ansi  se  las  concedi(5,  .  .  .  con  todaa  las  tierras,  pu- 
ertos,  islas,  tratos,  rescates,  pesquerlas  y  cosaa  &  esto  pertene- 
cientes,  poniendo  censuras  y  penas  A  todos  los  reyes  cristianoa, 
pHncipes,  y  seftores  y  comunidades  que  &  esto  le  perturbasen ; 
despues,  dieen,  que  los  sumos  pontlfices,  sucesores  de  Martino, 
como  Eugenio  IV.  y  Nicolas  V.  y  Calixto  IV.  lo  confirmaron." 
Las  Casas,  Hist,  de  las  Indias,  torn.  i.  p.  185.  The  name  of  Mar- 
tin V.  is  a  slip  of  the  memory  on  the  part  of  Las  Casas.  That 
pope  had  died  of  apoplexy  eleven  years  before.  It  was  Eugenius 
IV.  who  made  this  memorable  grant  to  the  crown  of  Portugal. 
The  error  is  repeated  in  Irving' s  Columbus,  vol.  i.  p.  339. 


I 


IMH? 


■ ;  ■  i 


lUi 


826  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

Cape  Verde,  and  two  years  later  Lanc^arote  found 
the  mouth  of  the  Gambia.  In  1456  Luigi  Cada- 
mosto  —  a  Venetian  captain  in  the  service  of  Por- 
tugal —  went  as  far  as  the  Rio  Grande ;  in  1460 
Diego  Gomez  discovered  the  Cape  Verde  islands ; 

and  in  1462  Piedro  de  Cintra  reached 

sier?rilone.    Sierra  Leone.i     At  the  same  time,  in 

1  various  expeditions  between  1431  and 

1466,  the  Azores  (i.  e.  "  Hawk  "  islands)  were  re- 
discovered and  colonized,  and  voyages  out  into  the 
Sea  of  Darkness  began  to  lose  something  of  their 
\.  manifold  terrors. 

Prince  Henry  did  not  live  to  see  Africa  circum- 
navigated. At  the  time  of  his  death,  in  1463,  his 
ships  had  not  gone  farther  than  the  spot  where 
Hanno  found  his  gorillas  two  thousand  years  be- 
fore. But  the  work  of  this  excellent  prince  did 
not  end  with  his  death.  His  adventurous  spirit 
lived  on  in  the  school  of  accomplished  navigators 
he  had  trained.  Many  voyages  were  made  after 
1462,  of  which  we  need  mention  only  those  that 
marked  new  stages  of  discovery.  In  1471  two 
knights  of  the  royal  household,  Joao  de  Santarem 
and  Pedro  de  Escobar,  sailed  down  the  Gold  Coast 
and  crossed  the  equator ;  three  years  later  the  line 

was  again  crossed  by  Fernando  Po,  dis- 
the  Hottentot  covercr   of   the   island   that  bears    his 

name.      In  1484  Diego  Cam  went  on 
as  far  as  the  mouth  of  the  Congo,  and  entered  into 

^  The  first  published  account  of  the  voyagen  of  Cadamosto  and 
Cintra  was  in  the  Paesi  nouamente  retrouati,  Vicenza,    1507,  a 
j  li  small  quarto  which  can  now  sometimes  be  bought  for  from  twelve 

'  ''  to   fifteen   hundred  dollars.      See   also  Gryuaeus,  Novvs    Orbis, 

Basel,  1532. 


!::r 


uk.a'vn  *./"..  :A  I  r^  ^t.  ■ 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


32T 


very  friendly  relations  with  the  negroes  there.  In 
a  second  voyage  in  1485  this  enterprising  captain 
pushed  on  a  thousand  miles  farther,  and  set  up  a 
cross  in  22°  south  latitude  on  the  coast  of  the  Hot- 
tentot country.  Brisk  trading  went  on  along  the 
Gold  Coast,  and  missionaries  were  sent  to  the 
Congo.^ 

^  It  was  in  the  course  of  these  voyages  upon  the  African  coast 
that  civilized  Europeans  first  became  fanniliar  with  people  below 
the  upper  status  of  barbarism.  Savagery  and  barbarism  of  the 
lower  types  were  practically  unknown  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and 
almost,  though  probably  not  quite  unknown,  to  the  civilized  peo- 
ples of  the  Mediterranean  in  ancient  times.  The  history  of  the 
two  words  is  interesting.  The  Greek  word  pipfiapos,  whence  Eng. 
barbarian  (=  Sanskrit  barbara,  Latin  balbus),  means  "a  stam- 
marer,"  or  one  who  talks  gibberish,  i.  e.  in  a  language  we  do  not 
understand.  Aristophanes  (Aves,  199)  very  prettily  applies  the 
epithet  to  the  inarticulate  singing  of  birds.  The  names  [Velsh, 
Walloon,  Wallachian,  and  Belooch,  given  to  these  peoples  by 
their  neighbours,  have  precisely  the  same  meaning  (Kuhn's  Zeit- 
schrijl,  ii.  252) ;  and  in  like  manner  the  Russians  call  the  Germans 
Nyemetch,  or  people  who  cannot  talk  (Schafarik,  Slamsche  Alter- 
thumer,  i.  443  ;  Pott,  Etym.  Forsch.,  ii.  521).  The  Greeks  called  all 
men  but  themselves  barbai-ians,  including  such  civilized  people  as 
the  Persians.  The  Romans  applied  the  name  to  all  tribes  and  na- 
tions outside  the  limits  of  the  Empire,  and  the  Italians  of  the  later 
Middle  Ages  bestowed  it  upon  all  nations  outside  of  Italy.  Upon 
its  lax  use  in  recent  times  I  have  already  commented  (above,  pp. 
25-35).  The  tendency  to  apply  the  epithet  to  savages  is  modern. 
The  word  savage,  on  the  other  hand,  which  came  to  us  as  the  Old 
French  sauvage  or  salvage  (Ital.  selvaggio,  salvatico),  is  the  Latin 
silvaticus,  sylvaticus,  salvaticus,  that  which  pertains  to  a  forest  and 
is  sylvan  or  wild.  In  its  earliest  usage  it  had  reference  to  plants 
and  beasts  rather  than  to  men.  Wild  apples,  pears,  or  laurels 
are  characterized  by  the  epithet  sylvaticus  in  Varro,  De  re  rusticay 
i.  40 ;  and  either  this  adjective,  or  its  equivalent  silvestris,  was 
nsed  of  wild  animals  as  contrasted  with  domesticated  beasts,  as 
wild  sheep  and  wild  fowl,  in  Columella,  vii.  2  ;  viii.  12,  or  wolves, 
in  Propertlus,  iii.  7,  or  mice,  in  Pliny,  xxx.  22.  (Occasionally  it  is 
Qaed  of  m«n,  as  in  Pliny,  viii.  79.)    The  meaning  was  the  same  ia 


(I 


328  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

These  voyages  into    the    southern    hemisphere 
dealt  a  damaging  blow  to  the  theory  of  an  impas- 

mediseval  Latin  (Du  Cange,  Glossarium,  Niort,  1886,  torn.  vii.  p. 
68(^)  and  in  Old  French,  as  "  La  douce  voiz  du  louasipnol  sauvage  " 
(Michel,  Chansons  de  chatelain  de  Coucy,  xix.).  lu  the  romance 
of  Robert  le  Diable,  in  the  verses 

Sire,  86  V08  fustes  Sauvagea 

Viers  moi,  je  a'i  pris  rate  garde,  etc., 

the  reference  is  plainly  to  degenerate  civilized  men  frequenting 
the  forests,  such  as  bandits  or  outlaws,  not  to  what  we  call  8aT« 
ages. 

Mediaeval  writers  certainly  had  some  idea  of  savages,  but  it 
was  not  based  iipon  any  actual  acquaintance  with  such  people, 
but  upon  imperfectly  apprehended  statements  of  ancient  writers. 
At  the  famous  ball  at  tlie  Hotel  de  Saint  Pol  in  Paris,  in  1393, 
King  Charles  VL  and  five  noblemen  were  dressed  in  close-fitting 
suits  of  linen,  thickly  covered  from  head  to  foot  with  tow  or  flax, 
the  colour  of  hair, so  as  to  look  like  "savages."  In  this  attire  no- 
body recognized  them,  and  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  in  his  eagerness 
to  make  out  who  they  were,  brought  a  torch  too  near,  so  that  the 
flax  took  fire,  and  four  of  the  noblemen  were  burned  to  death. 
See  Froissart's  Chronicles,  tr.  Johnes,  London,  1806,  vol.  xi.  pp. 
69-76.  The  point  of  the  story  is  that  savages  were  supposed  to 
be  men  covered  with  hair,  like  beasts,  and  Froissart,  in  relating 
it,  evidently  knew  no  better.  Whence  came  this  notion  of  hairy 
men  ?  Probably  from  Hanno's  gorillas  (see  above,  p.  301), 
through  Pliny,  whose  huge  farrago  of  facts  and  fancies  was  a  sort 
of  household  Peter  Parley  in  mediaeval  monasteries.  Pliny  speaks 
repeatedly  of  men  covered  with  hair  from  head  to  foot,  and  scat- 
ters them  about  according  to  his  fancy,  in  Carmania  and  other 
distant  places  {Hist.  Nat.,  vi.  28,  36,  vii.  2). 

Greek  and  Roman  writers  seem  to  have  had  some  slight  know- 
j  J  ledge  of  savagery  and  the  lower  status  '  f  barbarism  as  prevail- 

ing in  remote  places  ("  Ptolom^e  dit  que  es  extremit^s  de  la  terra 
habitable  sont  gens  sauvages,"  Oresme,  Les  J^thiques  d^Aristote, 
Paris,  1488),  but  their  remarks  are  usually  vague.  Seldom  do  we 
get  such  a  clean-cut  statement  as  that  of  Tacitus  about  the  Finns, 
that  they  have  neither  horses  nor  houses,  sleep  on  the  ground, 
are  clothed  in  skins,  live  by  the  chase,  and  for  want  of  iron  use 
bone-tipped  arrows  (Germania,  cap.  46).  More  often  we  have 
unconscionable  yams  about  men  without  noses,  or  with  only  ona 


i 


*| 


i'i  5 

M 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


329 


sable  fieiy  zone ;  but  as  to  the  circumnavigability 
of  the  African  continent,  the  long  stretch  of  coast 
beyond  the  equator  seemed  more  in  harmony  with 
Ptolemy's   views   than    with    those    of 
Mela.  The  eastward  trend  of  the  Guinea  discoveries 
coast  was  at  first  in  favour  of  the  latter  ories  of  ptoi- 

,  ,  ,  „  emyandMela. 

geographer,   but   when    oantarem    and 

Escobar  found  it  turning  southward  to  the  equator 

the  facts  began  to  refute  him.    According  to  Mela 

eye,  tailed  men,  solid-hoofed  men,  Amazona,  and  parthenopenesis. 
The  Troglodytes,  or  Cave-dwellers,  on  the  Nubian  coast  of  the 
"Red  Sea  seem  to  have  been  in  the  middle  status  of  barbarism 
(Diodorus,  iii.  32  ;  Agatharchides,  61-03),  and  the  Ichthyophagi, 
or  Fish-eaters,  whom  Nearchus  found  on  the  shores  of  Gedrosia 
(Arrian,  Indica,  cap.  2'.)),  were  probably  in  a  lower  stage,  perhaps 
true  savages.  It  is  exceedingly  curious  that  Mela  puts  a  race  of 
pygmies  at  the  headwaters  of  the  Nile  (see  map  above,  p.  304). 
Is  this  only  an  echo  from  Iliad,  iii.  6,  or  can  any  ancient  traveller 
have  penetrated  far  enougli  inland  toward  the  equator  to  have 
heard  reports  of  the  dwarfish  race  lately  visited  by  Stanley  (In 
Darkest  Africa,  vol.  ii.  pp.  100-104,  1(54)  ?  Strabo  had  no  real 
knowledge  of  savagery  in  Africa  (cf.  Bunbury,  Hist.  Ancient 
Geog.,  ii.  331).  Sataspes  may  have  seen  barbarians  of  low  type, 
possibly  on  one  of  the  Canary  isles  (see  description  of  Canarians 
in  Major's  Prince  Henry,  p.  212).  Ptolemy  had  heard  of  an  island 
of  cannibals  in  the  Indian  ocean,  perhaps  one  of  the  Andaman 
group,  visited  A.  D.  1293  by  Marco  Polo.  The  people  of  these 
islands  rank  among  the  lowest  savages  on  the  earth,  and  Marco 
■was  disgusted  and  horrified  ;  their  beastly  faces,  with  huge  prog- 
nathous jaws  and  projecting  canine  teeth,  he  tried  to  describe  by 
calling  them  a  dog-headed  people.  Sir  Henry  Yule  suggests  that 
the  mention  of  Cynocephali,  or  Dog-heads,  in  ancient  writers  may 
have  had  an  analogous  origin  (Marco  Polo,  vol.  ii.  p.  252).  This 
visit  of  the  Venetian  traveller  to  Andaman  was  one  of  very  few 
real  glimpses  of  savagery  vouchsafed  to  Europeans  before  the 
fifteenth  century ;  and  a  general  review  of  the  subject  brings  out 
in  a  strong  light  the  truthfulness  and  authenticity  of  the  descrip- 
tion of  American  Indians  in  Eric  the  Red's  Saga,  as  shown  above, 
pp.  185-192. 


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THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


they  should  have  found  it  possible  at  once  to  sail  ^ 
eastward  to  the  gulf  of  Aden.  What  if  it  should 
turn  out  after  all  that  there  was  no  connection  be- 
tween the  Atlantic  and  Indian  oceans?  Every 
added  league  of  voyaging  toward  the  tropic  of 
Capricorn  must  have  been  fraught  with  added 
discouragement,  for  it  went  to  prove  that,  even  if 
Ptolemy's  theory  was  wrong,  at  any  rate  the  ocean 
route  to  Asia  was  indefinitely  longer  than  had 
been  supposed.  But  was  it  possible  to  imagine 
any  other  route  that  should  be  more  direct  ?  To 
a  trained  mariner  of  original  and  imaginative 
mind,  sojourning  in  Portugal  and  keenly  watching 
the  progress  of  African  discovery,  the  years  just 
following  the  voyage  of  Santarem  and  Escobar 
would  be  a  period  eminently  fit  for  suggesting 
such  a  question.  Let  us  not  forget  this  date  of 
1471  while  we  follow  Prince  Henry's  work  to  its 
first  grand  climax. 

About  the  time  that  Diego  Cam  was  visiting  the 
tribes  on  the  Congo,  the  negro  king  of  Benin, 
a  country  by  the  mouth  of  the  Niger,  sent  an 
embassy  to  John  II.  of  Portugal  (Prince  Henry's 
nephew),  with  a  request  that  missionary  priests 
might  be  sent  to  Benin.  It  has  been  thought  that 
the  woolly-haired  chieftain  was  really  courting  an 
alliance  with  the  Portuguese,  or  perhaps  he  thought 
their  "  medicine  men  "  might  have  the  knack  of 
confounding  his  foes.  The  negro  envoy  told  King 
John  that  a  thousand  miles  or  so  east  of  Benin 
there  was  an  august  sovereign  who  ruled  over  many 
subject  peoples,  and  at  whose  court  there  was  an 
order  of   chivalry  whose   badge  or  emblem  was 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


331 


a  brazen  cross.  Such,  at  least,  was  the  king's  in- 
terpretation of  the  negro's  words,  and  forthwith  he 
jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  this  Af  ri-  New«  of 
can  potentate  must  be  Prester  John,  ^'"•**"' •^°'*°- 
whose  name  was  redolent  of  all  the  marvels  of  the 
mysterious  East.  To  find  Prester  John  would  be 
a  long  step  toward  golden  Cathay  and  the  isles  of 
spice.  So  the  king  of  Portugal  rose  to  the  occasion, 
and  attacked  the  problem  on  both  flanks  at  once. 
He  sent  Pedro  de  Covilham  by  way  of  Egypt  to 
Aden,  and  he  sent  Bartholomew  Dias,  with  three 
fifty-ton  caravels,  to  make  one  more  attempt  to 
find  an  end  to  the  Atlantic  coast  of  Africa. 

Covilham's  journey  was  full  of  interesting  expe- 
riences. Ho  sailed  from  Aden  to  Hindustan,  and 
on  his  return  visited  Abyssinia,  where  covUham'i 
the  semi-Christian  king  took  such  a  lik-  ^''""'•y- 
ing  to  him  that  he  would  never  let  him  go.  So 
Covilham  spent  the  rest  of  his  life,  more  than 
thirty  years,  in  Abyssinia,  whence  he  was  able 
now  and  then  to  send  to  Portugal  items  of  infor- 
mation concerning  eastern  Africa  that  were  after- 
wards quite  serviceable  in  voyages  upon  the  Indian 
ocean.i 

The  daring  captain,  Bartholomew  Dias,  started 
in  August,  1486,  and  after  passing  nearly  four 
hundred  miles  beyond  the  tropic  of  Capricorn, 
was  driven  due  south  before  heavy  winds  for 
thirteen  days  without  seeing  land.  At  the  end  of 
this  stress  of  weather  he  turned  his  prows  east- 
ward, expecting  soon  to  reach  the  coast.  But  as 
he  had  passed  the  southernmost  point  of  Africa 

.  *  See  Major's  India  in  the  Fijieenth  Century^  pp.  Izzzr.-zo. 


832 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Bartliolomew 
Dia8  passes 
the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope 
•nd  enters  the 
Indian  ocean. 


and  no  land  appeared  before  him,  after  a  while 
he  steered  northward  and  landed  near 
the  mouth  of  Gauritz  river,  more  than 
two  hundred  miles  east  of  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope.  Thence  he  pushed  on 
about  four  hundred  miles  farther  eastward  as  far 
as  the  Great  Fish  river  (about  33°  30'  S.,  27°  10' 
E.),  where  the  coast  begins  to  have  a  steady  trend 
to  the  northeast.  Dias  was  now  fairly  in  the  In- 
dian ocean,  and  could  look  out  with  wistful  triumph 
upon  that  waste  of  waters,  but  his  worn-out  crews 
refused  to  go  any  farther  and  he  was  compelled 
reluctantly  to  turn  back.  On  the  way  homeward 
the  ships  passed  in  full  sight  of  the  famous  head- 
land which  Dias  called  the  Stormy  Cape  ;  but 
after  arriving  at  Lisbon,  in  December,  1487,  when 
the  report  of  this  noble  voyage  was  laid  before 
King  John  II.,  his  majesty  said.  Nay,  let  it  rather 
be  called  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  since  there  was 
now  much  reason  to  believe  that  they  had  found 
the  long-scught  ocean  route  to  the  Indies.^  Though 
this  opinion  turned  out  to  be  correct,  it  is  well  for 
us  to  remember  that  the  proof  was  not  yst  com- 

^  The  greatest  of  Portugfuese  poets  represents  the  Genius  of 
the  Cape  as  appearing  to  the  storm-tossed  mariners  in  cloud-like 
shape,  like  the  Jinni  that  the  fiflherman  of  the  Arabian  tale  re- 
leased from  a  casket.  He  expresses  indignation  at  their  audacity 
in  discovering  his  secret,  hitherto  hidden  from  mankind :  — 

Eu  sou  aquelle  occulto  e  grande  Cabo, 
A  quern  chamais  yos  outros  Tormentorio, 
Que  nunca  &  Ptolomeo,  Pompouio,  Estrabo, 
Plinio,  e  quantos  passaram,  fui  notorio : 
Aqui  toda  a  Africana  costa  acabo 
Neste  meu  nunca  vista  promontorio, 
Que  para  o  polo  Antarctico  se  estende, 
A  quern  vossa  ouaadia  tanto  offende. 

Camoens,  Ot  Ltuiadas,  v.  60. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


883 


plete.  No  one  could  yet  say  with  certainty  that 
the  African  coast,  if  followed  a  few  miles  east  of 
Great  Fish  river,  would  not  again  trend  southward 
and  run  all  the  way  to  the  pole.  The  completed 
proof  was  not  obtained  until  Vasco  da  Gama 
crossed  the  Indian  ocean  ten  years  later. 

This  voyage  of  Bartholomew  Dias  was  longer 
and  in  many  respects  more  remarkable  than  auy 
that  is  known  to  have  been  made  before  that  time. 
From  Lisbon  back  to  Lisbon,  reckoning  the  sinu- 
osities of  the  coast,  but  making  no  allowance  for 
tacking,  the  distance  run  by  those  tiny  craft  was 
not  less  than  thirteen  thousand  miles. 
This  voyage  completed  the  overthrow  of  of  the  diaooT- 
the  fiery-zone  doctrine,  so  far  as  Africa  "'^' 
was  concerned  ;  it  penetrated  far  into  the  southern 
temperate  zone  where  Mela  had  placed  his  antipo- 
dal world ;  it  dealt  a  staggerinr  blow  to  the  con- 
tinental theory  of  Ptolemy  ;  anc   its  success  made 
men's  minds  readier  for  yet  more  daring  enter- 
prises.    Among  the   shipmates   of  Dias  on   this 
ever  memorable  voyage  was   a  well-trained  and 
enthusiastic  Italian  mariner,  none  other  Bartholomew 
than  Bartholomew,  the  younger  brother     °  "™  "* 
of  Christopher  Columbus.     There  was  true  dra- 
matic propriety  in  the  presence  of  that  man  at 
just  this  time ;  for  not  only  did  all  these  later 
African  voyages  stand  in  a  direct  causal  relation 
to  the  discovery  of  America,  but  as  an  immediate 
consequence  of  the  doubling  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  we  shall  presently  find  Bartholomew  Colum- 
bus in  the  very  next  year  on  his  way  to  England, 
to  enlist  the  aid  of  King  Henry  VII.  in  behalf  of 


I 


834 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


a  scheme  of  unprecedented  boldness  for  which  his 
elder  brother  had  for  some  years  been  seeking  to 
obtain  the  needful  funds.  Not  long  after  that  dis- 
appointing voyage  of  Santarem  and  Escobar  in 
1471,  this  original  and  imaginative  sailor,  Chris- 
topher Columbus,  had  conceived  (or  adopted  and 
made  his  own)  a  new  method  of  solving  the  prob- 
lem of  an  ocean  route  to  Cathay.  We  have  now 
to  sketch  the  early  career  of  this  epoch-making 
man,  and  to  see  how  he  came  to  be  brought  into 
close  relations  with  the  work  of  the  Portuguese 
explorers. 


CHAPTER  V. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE   INDIES. 


WESTWARD   OR  SPANISH  ROUTE. 

Our  information  concerning  the  life  of  Colum- 
bus before  1492  is  far  from  being  as  satisfactory 
as  one  could  wish.  Unquestionably  he  is  to  be 
deemed  fortunate  in  having  had  for  his  biographers 
two  such  men  as  his  friend  Las  Casas,  one  of  the 
noblest  characters  and  most  faithful  historians  of 
that  or  any  age,  and  his  own  son  Ferdinand  Co- 
lumbus, a  most  accomplished  scholar  and  bibli- 
ographer. The  later  years  of  Ferdinand's  life 
were  devoted,  with  loving  care,  to  the 
preparation  of  a  biography  of  his 
father  ;  and  his  book  —  which  unfortu- 
nately survives  only  in  the  Italian  trans- 
lation of  Alfonso  Ulloa,^  published  in 
Venice  in  1571  —  is  of  priceless  value.  As  Wash- 
ington Irving  long  ago  wrote,  it  is  "  an  invaluable 
document,  entitled  to  great  faith,  and  is  the  comer- 

^  Historie  del  S.  D.  Fernando  Colombo ;  Nelle  quali  s'  ha  parti- 
colare,  ^  vera  relatione  delta  vita,  S/'  de''  fatti  delV  Aumirarjlio  D. 
Christoforo  Colombo,  suo  padre:  Et  dello  scoprimentc.  ch^  tglifcce 
deW  Indie  Occidentali,  dette  Monde  -  Nvovo,  hora  possedute  dal 
Sereniss.  Re  Catolico :  Nuouamente  di  lingua  SpagnuoUi  tradotte 
nelV  Italiana  dal  S.Alfonso  Vlloa.  Con privihjio.  In  Venetia, 
M  D  Lxxi.  Appresso  Francesco  de'  Franceschi  Sanest.  The  prin- 
cipal reprints  are  those  of  Milan,  1614 ;  Venice,  1676  and  1678 ; 
London,  1867<     I  always  cite  it  as  Vita,  ddV  Ammiraglio. 


Sources  of 
information 
concemine  the 
life  of  CoTum' 
hut:  Las 
Casas  and 
Ferdinand 
Columbus. 


K^. 


336 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


atone  of  the  history  of  the  American  continent." ' 
After  Ferdinand's  death,  in  1539,  his  papers  seem 
to  have  passed  into  the  hands  of  Las  Casas,  who, 
from  1552  to  1561,  in  the  seclusion  of  the  college 
of  San  Gregorio  at  Valladolid,  was  engaged  in 
writing  his  great  "  History  of  the  Indies."  ^  Fer- 
dinand's superb  library,  one  of  the  finest  in  Eu- 
rope, was  bequeathed  to  the  cathedral  at  Seville.^ 
It  contained  some  twenty  thousand  volumes  in 
print  and  manuscript,  four  fifths  of  which,  through 
shameful  neglect  or  vandalism,  have  perished  or 
been  scattered.  Four  thousand  volumes,  however, 
are  still  preserved,  and  this  library  (known  as  the 
"  Biblioteca  Colombina  ")  is  full  of  in- 

The  Biblioteca    ^  ^     .         ^.         ■!•,•  t»ii 

Colombina  at  tcrcst  for  the  historian.  i3ook-buying 
was  to  Ferdinand  Columbus  one  of  the 
most  important  occupations  in  life.  His  books 
were  not  only  carefully  numbered,  but  on  the  last 
leaf  of  each  one  he  wrote  a  memorandum  of  the  time 
and  place  of  its  purchase  and  the  sum  of  money 
paid  for  it.*     This  habit  of  Ferdinand's  has  fur- 

^  Irving's  Life  of  Columbus,  New  York,  1868,  vol.  iii.  p.  375. 
My  references,  unless  otherwise  specified,  are  to  this,  the  "  Geof- 
frey Crayon,"  edition. 

^  Laa  Casas,  Historia  de  las  Indias,  ahora  por  primera  vex  dada 
d  lux  por  el  Marques  de  la  Fuensanta  del  Valle  y  D.  JosS  Sancho 
Rayon,  Madrid,  1875,  5  vols.  8vo. 

'  "  Fa  questo  D.  Ernando  di  non  minor  valore  del  padre,  ma 
di  molte  piii  lettere  et  scienze  dotato  che  quelle  non  f u ;  et  il 
quale  lasci6  alia  Cbiesa  maggiore  di  Siviglia,  dove  hoggi  si  vede 
honorevolmente  sepolto,  una,  non  sola  numerosissiraa,  ma  richissi 
ma  lihraria,  et  plena  di  molti  libri  in  ogni  f  acolt^  et  scienza  rarissi- 
mi :  laquale  da  coloro  che  1'  han  veduta,  vien  stimata  delle  pih 
rare  cose  di  tutta  Europa."  Moleto's  prefatory  letter  to  Vita  dell* 
Ammiraglio,  April  25,  1571. 

*  For  example,  "  Manuel  de  la  Sancta  Fe  catdica,  Jicvilla,  1495^ 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


337 


nished  us  with  clues  to  the  sohition  of  some  inter- 
esting questions.  Besides  this,  he  was  much  given 
to  making  marginal  notes  and  comments,  which 
are  sometimes  of  immense  value,  and,  more  than 
aU,  there  are  stiU  to  be  seen  in  this  library  a  few 
books  that  belonged  to  Christopher  Columbus  him- 
self, with  very  important  notes  in  his  own  hand* 
writing  and  in  that  of  his  brother  Bartholomew. 
Las  Casas  was  familiar  with  this  grand  collection 
in  the  days  of  its  completeness,  he  was  well  ac- 
quainted ^vith  all  the  members  of  the  Columbus 
family,  and  he  had  evidently  read  the  manuscript 
sources  of  Ferdinand's  book  ;  for  a  comparison 
with  Ulloa's  version  she  ./s  that  considerable  por- 
tions of  the  original  Spanish  text  —  or  of  the  doc- 
uments upon  which  it  rested  —  are  preserved  in  the 
work  of  Las  Casas.  ^  The  citation  and  adoption  of 
Ferdinand's  statements  by  the  latter  writer,  who 
was  able  independently  to  verify  them,  is  therefore 
in  most  cases  equivalent  to  corroboration,  and  the 
two  writers  together  form  an  authority  of  the 
weightiest  kind,  and  not  lightly  to  be  questioned  or 
set  aside. 

in-4.  Cost(S  en  Toledo  34  maravedis,  aflo  1511,  9  de  Octubre,  No. 
3004."  "  Trayicomedia  de  Calisto  y  Melibea,  Sevilla,  1502,  in-4. 
Muchas  figuras.  Co8t6  en  Roma  25  cuatrines,  por  Juuio  de  1515. 
No.  2417,"  etc.  See  Harrisse,  Fernand  Colomb,  Paris,  1872,  p.  13. 
^  "  L'  autorita  di  Las  Casaa  6  d'  una  suprema  e  vitale  impor- 
tanza  tanto  nella  storia  di  Criatoforo  Colombo,  come  nell'  esame 
delle  Historic  di  Fernando  suo  figlio.  .  .  .  E  dal  confronto  tra 
questi  due  scrittori  emergerk  una  omogeneitk  si  perfetta,  che  si 
potrebbe  coi  termini  del  frate  domenicano  ritrovare  o  rifare  per 
due  terzi  il  testo  originale  spagnuolo  delle  Historic  di  Fernando 
Colombo."  Peragallo,  L'  autenticittX  delle  Historie  di  Fernando 
Colombo,  Genoa,  1884,  p.  23. 


S88  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

Besides  these  books  of  most  fundamental  impoiv 
tance,  we  have  valuable  accounts  of  some  parts  of 
the  life  of  Colmnbus  by  his  friend  Andres  Ber- 
Bernaidez  and  naldcz,  thc  curatc  of  Los  Palacios  near 
Peter  Martyr.    ^^^iHqI     p^ter  Martyr,  of   Anghiera, 

by  Lago  Maggiore,  was  an  intimate  friend  of 
Columbus,  and  gives  a  good  account  of  his  voy- 
ages, besides  mentioning  him  in  sundry  epistles.^ 
Columbus  himself,  moreover,  was  such  a  volu- 
minous writer  that  his  contemporaries  laughed 
about  it.  "  God  grant,"  says  Zufiiga  in  a  letter  to 
the  Marquis  de  Pescara,  "  God  grant  that  Gutier- 
rez may  never  come  short  for  paper,  for  he  writes 
more  than  Ptolemy,  more  than  Columbus,  the  man 
who  discovered  the  Indies."  ^  These  writings  are 
Letters  of  ^^  great  part  lost,  though  doubtless  a 
Columbus.  goo^  many  things  will  yet  be  brought 
to  light  in  Spain  by  persistent  rummaging.  We 
have,  however,  from  sixty  to  seventy  letters  and 
reports  by  Columbus,  of  which  t\\ enty-three  at 
least  are  in  his  own  handwriting ;  and  all  these 
have  been  published.* 

Nevertheless,  while   these   contemporary  mate- 

^  Historia  de  los  Reyes  Catdlicos  D.  Fernando  y  ly*  Isabel. 
Crdnica  inidita  del  siglo  XV,  escrita  por  el  Bachiller  Andrh 
Bernaldez,  cur  a  que  fui  de  Los  Palacios,  Grai>H(Ia,  1856,  2  vols, 
small  4to.     It  is  a  book  of  very  high  authority. 

^  De  orbe  novo  Decades,  Alcald,  1516 ;  Opus  epistolarum,  Cora- 
pluti  (Alcald),  1530 ;  Harrisse,  Bibliotheca  Americana  Vetustis- 
sima,  Nos.  88, 160. 

'  **  A  Gutierrez  vuestro  solicitador,  ruego  h  Dios  que  nunca  le 
faJte  papal,  porque  escribe  mas  que  Tolomeo  y  que  Colon,  el  que 
hall(S  las  Indias."  Rivadeneyra,  Curiosidades  bibliogrdjicas,  p.  59, 
apud  Harrisse,  Christophe  Colomb,  torn.  i.  p.  1. 

*  Harrisse,  Ice.  cit.,  in  1884,  gfives  the  number  at  sixty-four. 


m 


]] 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


339 


rials  give  us  abundant  information  concerning  the 
great  discoverer,  from  the  year  1492  until  his 
death,  it  is  quite  otherwise  with  his  earlier  years, 
especially  before  his  arrival  in  Spain  in  1484.  His 
own  allusions  to  these  earlier  years  are  sometimes 
hard  to  interpret ;  ^  and  as  for  his  son  Ferdinand, 
that  writer  confesses,  with  characteristic  and  win- 
ning frankness,  that  his  information  is 

_£      .     '  i  nf    ^  j.rj     Defects  In 

imperfect,  inasmuch  as  liliai  respect  had  Ferdinand's 

1,  ii<<<  1         1*.  >•  information. 

deterred  him  rrom  closely  interrogating 
his  father  on  such  points,  or,  to  tell  the  plain 
truth,  being  still  very  young  when  his  father  died, 
he  had  not  then  come  to  recognize  their  impor- 
tance.'^ This  does  not  seem  strange  when  we  re- 
flect that  Ferdinand  must  have  seen  very  little  of 
his  father  until  in  1502,  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  he 
accompanied  him  on  that  last  difficult  and  disas- 
trous voyage,  in  which  the  sick  and  harassed  old 
man  could  have  had  but  little  time  or  strength  for 
aught  but  the  work  in  hand.  It  is  not  strange 
that  when,  a  quarter  of  a  century  later,  the  son  set 
about  his  literary  task,  he  should  now  and  then 
have  got  a  date  wrong,  or  have  narrated  some  inci- 

1  Sometimes  from  a  slip  of  memory  or  carelessness  of  pliras- 
^ng,  on  Columbus's  part,  sometimes  from  our  lacking  the  clue, 
sometimes  from  an  error  in  numerals,  common  enough  at  all 
times. 

^  "Ora,  1'  Ammiraglio  avendo  cognizione  delle  dette  scienze, 
comincib  ad  attendere  al  mare,  e  a  fare  alcunt  viaggi  in  levante  e 
in  ponente ;  de'  quali,  e  di  molte  altre  cose  di  quei  primi  di  io 
non  ho  piena  notizia  ;  perciocch^  egli  venne  a  morte  a  tempo  cbe 
io  non  aveva  tanto  ardire,  o  pratica,  per  la  riverenza  filiale,  che  io 
ardissi  di  richiederlo  di  cotali  cose  ;  o,  per  parlare  pid  veraniente, 
allora  mi  ritrovava  io,  come  giovane,  molto  loutauo  da  cotal  pen- 
siero."     Vita  rfe//'  Ammiraglio,  cap.  iv. 


a.   ' 


ill 


340 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


dents  in  a  confused  manner,  or  have  admitted 
some  gossipping  stories,  the  falsehood  of  which  can 
now  plainly  be  detected.  Such  blemishes,  which 
occur  chiefly  in  the  earlier  part  of  Ferdinand's 
book,  do  not  essentially  detract  from  its  high  im- 
thority.^      The   limits   which   bounded   the   son's 


^  Twenty  years  ago  M.  HarnRse  published  in  Spanish  and 
French  a  critical  essay  maintaining  that  the  Vita  delV  Ammira- 
glio  was  not  written  by  Ferdinand  Columbus,  but  probably  by  the 
famous  scholar  Perez  de  Oliva,  professor  in  the  university  of  Sal- 
amanca, who  died  in  1530  (D.  Fernando  Colon,  historiador  de  su 
padre,  Seville,  1871  ;  Fernand  Colomb:  sa  ine,  ses  ceuvres,  Paris, 
1872).  The  Spanish  manuscript  of  the  book  had  quite  a  career. 
As  already  observed,  it  is  clear  that  Las  Casas  used  it,  probably 
between  1552  and  1561.  From  Ferdinand's  nephew,  Luis  Colum- 
bus, it  seems  to  have  passed  in  15t)8  into  the  hands  of  Baliano  di 
Fomari,  a  prominent  citizen  of  Genoa,  who  sent  it  to  Venice  with 
the  intention  of  having  it  edited  and  published  with  Latin  and  ItaU 
ian  versions.  All  that  ever  appeared,  liowever,  was  the  Italian  ver- 
sion made  by  Ulloa  and  published  in  1571.  Harrisse  supposes  that 
the  Spanish  manuscript,  written  by  Oliva,  was  taken  to  Genoa  by 
some  adventurer  and  palmed  o£F  upon  Baliano  di  Fornari  as  the 
work  of  Ferdinand  Columbus.  But  inasmuch  as  Harrisse  also  sup- 
poses that  Oliva  probably  wrote  the  book  (about  1525)  at  Seville, 
under  Ferdinand's  eyes  and  with  documents  furnished  by  him,  it 
becomes  a  questitui,  in  such  case,  how  far  was  Oliva  anything 
more  than  an  amanuensis  to  Ferdinand  ?  and  there  seems  really  to 
be  precious  little  wool  after  so  much  loud  crying.  If  the  manu- 
script was  actually  written  "  sous  les  yeux  de  Fernand  et  avec 
documents  fournis  par  Im,"  most  of  the  arguments  alleged  to 
prove  that  it  could  not  have  emanated  from  the  son  of  Columbus 
fall  to  the  ground.  It  becomes  simply  a  (question  whether  Ulloa 
may  have  here  and  there  tampered  with  the  text,  or  made  addi> 
tions  of  his  own.  To  some  extent  he  seems  to  have  done  so,  but 
wherever  the  Italian  version  is  corroborated  by  the  Spanish 
extracts  in  Las  Casas,  we  are  on  solid  ground,  for  Las  Casas  died 
five  years  before  the  Italian  version  was  published.  M.  Harrisse 
does  not  seem  as  yet  to  have  convinced  many  scholars.  His  argu- 
ments have  been  justly,  if  somewhat  severely,  characterized  by  my 
old  friend,  the  lamented  Henry  Stevens  {Historical  Collections, 


;    '  s 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


341 


accurate  knowledji^e  seem  also  to  have  bounded 
that  of  such  friends  as  Bernaldez,  who  did  not  be- 
come acquainted  with  Columbus  until  after  his 
arrival  in  Spain. 

In  recent  years  elaborate  researches  have  been 
made,  by  Henry  Harrisse  and  others,  in  the  ar- 
chives  of  Genoa,  Savona,  Seville,  and 

,1  1  •,,         1*1     v^i         1  Reiteari'tiea  of 

other  places  with  which  Columbus  was  Henry  uar- 
connected,  in  the  hope  of  supplement- 
ing this  imperfect  information  concerning  his  ear- 
lier years.  ^  A  number  of  data  have  thus  been 
obtained,  which,  while  clearing  up  the  subject 
most  remarkably  in  some  directions,  have  been 
made  to  mystify  and  embroil  it  in  others.  There 
is  scarcely  a  date  or  a  fact  relating  to  Columbus 
before  1492  but  has  been  made  the  subject  of  hot 
dispute ;  and  some  pretty  wholesale  reconstruc- 
tions of  his  biography  have  been  attempted.'^  The 
general  impression,  however,  which  the  discussions 
of  the  past  twenty  years  have  left  upon  my  mind, 
is  that  the  more  violent  hypotheses  are  not  likely 

London,  1881,  vol.  i.  No.  13T9),  and  have  been  elaborately  refuted 
by  M.  d'Avezac,  Le  livre  de  Ferdinand  Colomb :  revue  critique  des 
allegations  propos^es  contre  son  authenticity,  Paris,  1873  ;  and  by 
Prospero  Peragallo,  L'  autenticitil  delle  Historie  di  Fernando  Co' 
lombo,  Genoa,  1884.  See  also  Fabi^,  Vida  de  Fray  liartolomi  de 
Las  Casas,  Madrid,  1869,  torn.  i.  pp.  3(>0-372. 

^  See  Harrisse,  Christophe  Colomb,  Paris,  1884,  2  vols.,  a  work 
of  immense  research,  absolutely  indispensable  to  every  student  of 
the  subject,  thoujyh  here  and  there  somewhat  over-ingenious  and 
hypercritical,  and  in  general  unduly  biased  by  the  author's  pri- 
vate crotchet  about  the  work  of  Ferdinand. 

2  One  of  the  most  radical  of  these  reconstructions  may  be 
found  in  the  essay  by  M.  d'Avezac,  "  Canev.a.s  chronologique  de  la 
''ie  de  Christophe  Colomb,"  in  Bulletin  de  la  Sociiti  de  Giographi&, 
Paris,  1872,  6*  s^rie,  torn.  iv.  pp.  5-59. 


f 


'ir 


842 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


to  be  sustained,  and  that  the  newly-ascertained  facta 
do  not  call  for  any  very  radical  interference  with 
the  traditional  lines  upon  which  the  life  of  Colum- 
bus has  heretofore  been  written.^  At  any  rate 
there  seems  to  be  no  likelihood  of  such  interfer" 
ence  as  to  modify  our  views  of  the  causal  sequence 
of  events  that  led  to  the  westward  search  for  the 
Indies ;  and  it  is  this  relation  of  cause  and  effect 
that  chiefly  concerns  us  in  a  history  of  the  Discov- 
ery of  America. 


The  date  of  the  birth  of  Columbus  is  easy  to 
determine  approximately,  but  hard  to  determine 
with  precision.  In  the  voluminous  discussion 
upon  this  subject  the  extreme  limits  assigned  have 
been  1430  and  1456,  but  neither  of  these  extremes 
is  admissible,  and  our  choice  really  lies  somewhere 

between  1436  and  1446.  Among  the 
birth  of  town  archives  of  Savona  is  a  deed  of 

archives  of       sale  cxccutcd  August  7,  1473,  by  the 

father  of  Christopher  Columbus,  and 
ratified  by  Christopher  and  his  next  brother  Gio- 
vanni."    Both  brothers  must  then  have  attained 

^  Wasiiington  Irving's  Life  of  Columbus,  says  Harriase,  "  is 
a  history  written  with  judg-ment  and  impartiality,  which  leaves 
far  behind  it  all  descriptions  of  the  discovery  of  the  New  World 
published  before  or  since."  Chnstophe  Colomh,  torn.  i.  p.  136. 
Irving  was  the  fii-st  to  make  use  .of  the  superb  work  of  Navar- 
rete,  Colecclon  de  los  viages  y  descubriniientos  que  hicieron  par  mar 
las  Esparioles  desde  fines  del  sigh  XV.,  Madrid,  1825-37,  5  vols. 
4to.  Next  followed  Alexander  von  Humboldt,  with  his  Examen 
critique  de  Vhisioire  de  la  gi^ographie  de  Nouveau  Continent,  Paris, 
183(i— 39,  5  vols.  8vo.  This  monument  of  gigantic  erudition 
(which,  unfortunately,  was  never  completed)  will  always  remain 
indispensable  to  the  historian. 

2  Uarrisse,  op.  cit.  toni,  i.  p.  196. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


343 


their  majority,  which  in  the  republic  of  Genoa  was 
fixed  at  the  age  of  twenty-five.  Christopher,  there- 
fore, can  hardly  have  been  less  than  seven  and 
twenty,  so  that  the  latest  probable  date  for  his 
birth  is  1446,  and  this  is  the  date  accepted  by 
Mufioz,  Major,  Harrisse,  and  Avezac.  There  is  no 
documentary  proof,  however,  to  prevent  our  taking 
an  earlier  date  ;  and  the  curate  of  Los  Palacios — 
strong  authority  on  such  a  point  —  says  statement  of 
expressly  that  at  the  time  of  his  death,  ^^'■"*^<^®''- 
in  1506,  Colmnbus  was  "  in  a  good  old  age,  seventy 
years  a  little  more  or  less."  ^  Upon  this  statement 
Navarrete  and  Humboldt  have  accepted  1436  as 
the  probable  date  of  birth.'^  The  most  plausible 
objection  to  tliis  is  a  statement  made  by  Columbus 
himself  in  a  letter  to  Ferdinand  and  Isabella, 
written  in  1501.  In  this  letter,  as  first  given  in 
the  biography  by  his  son,  Columbus  says  that  he 
was  of  "  very  tender  age  "  when  he  began  to  sail 
the  seas,  an  occupation  which  he  has  kept  up  until 
the  present  moment ;  and  in  the  next  sentence  but 
one  he  adds  that  "  now  for  forty  years  I  have  been 

^  "  In  senectute  bona,  de  edad  de  setenta  aflos  poco  mas  o  me- 
nos."     Bernaldez,  Reyes  Catdlicos,  torn.  i.  p.  334. 

^  M.  d' Avezac  {Canevas  chronologique,  etc)  objects  to  thia  date 
that  we  have  positive  documentary  evidence  of  the  birth  of  Chris- 
topher's youngest  brother  Giacomo  (afterwards  spanished  into 
Diego)  in  1468,  which  makes  an  interval  of  32  years ;  so  that  if 
the  mother  were  (say)  18  in  1436  she  must  have  borne  a  child  at 
the  age  of  50.  That  would  be  unusual,  but  not  unprecedented. 
But  M.  Harrisse  (tom.  ii.  p.  214),  from  a  more  thorough  sifting  of 
this  documentary  evidence,  seems  to  have  proved  that  while  Gia- 
como cannot  have  been  born  later  than  14G8  he  may  have  been 
born  as  early  as  1460 ;  so  that  whatever  is  left  of  M.  d  Avezac's 
objection  falls  to  the  ground. 


T 


V 


Mlii:' 


844 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


in  this  business  and  have  gone  to  every  plftce  where 
there  is  any  navigation  up  to  the  pres- 

Columbus's  .  „  1       mi  • 

letter  of  Sep-    eut  time.    ^     ihc  exprcssion  "vervten- 

tember,  1501.  •it-it  h 

der  age  agrees  with  i^  erdmand  s  state- 
ment that  his  father  was  fourteen  years  old  when 
he  first  took  to  the  sea.2  Since  1446  +  14  +  40  = 
1500,  it  is  argued  that  Columbus  was  probably 
born  about  1446  ;  some  sticklers  for  extreme  pre- 
cision say  1447.  But  now  there  were  eight  years 
spent  by  Columbus  in  Spain,  from  1484  to  1492, 
without  any  voyages  "  all ;  they  were  years,  as  he 
forcibly  says,  "  dragged  out  in  disputations."  ^ 
Did  he  mean  to  include  those  eight  years  in  his 
forty  spent  upon  the  sea?  Navarrete  thinks  he 
did  not.  When  he  wrote  under  excitement,  as  in 
this  letter,  his  language  was  apt  to  be  loose,  and 
it  is  fair  to  construe  it  according  to  the  general 
probabilities  of  the  case.  This  addition  of  eight 
years  brings  his  statement  substantially  into  har- 
mony with  that  of  Bernaldez,  which  it  really  wiU 
not  do  to  set  aside  lightly.  Moreover,  in  the  origi- 
nal text  of  the  letter,  since  published  by  Navarrete, 
Columbus  appears  to  say,  "now  for  more  than 
forty  years,"  so  that  the  agreement  with  Bernaldez 
becomes  practically  complete.*     The  good  curate 

^  "  Serenis»iini  principi,  di  et&  molto  tenera  io  entrai  in  mare 
navigando,  et  vi  ho  continovato  fin'  hoggi :  •  .  .  et  hoggimai  pas- 
sano  quaranta  anni  che  io  uso  per  tutte  quelle  parti  che  fin  hoggi 
si  navigano."     Vita  delV  Ammiraglio,  cap.  iv. 

'^  Op.  cit.  cap.  iv.  ad  Jin. 

*  "  Traido  en  disputas,"  Navarrete,  Coleccion,  torn.  ii.  p.  254. 

*  "Muyii.os  Reyes,  Je  mny  pequeiia  edad  entr^  en  la  mat 
navegando,  6  Io  he  eontlnuado  fasta  hoy.  .  .  .  Yd  pasan  de  ciia- 
renta  aiios  que  yo  voy  en  este  uso  :  todo  Io  que  hoy  se  navega, 
todo  Io  he  andado."     Navarrete,  Coleccion,  torn.  ii.  p.  262.     Ob> 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


345 


spoke  from  direct  personal  acquaintance,  and  liis 
phrases  "  seventy  years  "  and  "  a  good  old  age  " 
are  borne  out  by  the  royal  decree  of  The  balance  of 
February  23,  1505,  permitting  Coluni-  [.[tvour^o/' 
bus  to  ride  on  a  mule,  instead  of  a  horse,  ^*^' 
by  reason  of  his  old  age  (^cmclanidad^  and  infirm- 
ities.^ Such  a  plirase  applies  much  better  to  a 
man  of  sixty-nine  than  to  a  man  of  fifty-nine.  On 
the  whole,  I  think  that  Washington  Irving  showed 

serve  the  lame  phrase  "  pasan  de  cuarenta ;  "  what  business  has  that 
"  de  "  in  such  a  place  without "  mas  "  before  it  ?  "  Pasan  mas  de 
cuarenta,"  i.  e.  "  morr  than  forty ;  "  writing  in  haste  and  excite- 
ment, Columbus  left  out  a  little  word ;  or  shall  we  blame  the 
proof-reader  ?  Avezac  himself  translates  it  "  il  y  a  plus  de  qua- 
rante  ans,"  and  so  does  Eugene  Miiller,  in  his  French  version  of 
Ferdinand's  book,  Histoire  de  la  vie  de  Christophe  Colomb,  Paris, 
1879,  p.  1.5. 

^  That  was  the  golden  age  of  sumptuary  laws.  Because  Al- 
fonso XI.  of  Castile  (1312-1350),  when  he  tried  to  impress  horses 
for  the  army,  found  it  hard  to  get  as  many  as  he  wanted,  he  took 
it  into  his  head  that  his  subjects  were  raising  too  many  mules  and 
not  enough  horses.  So  he  tried  to  remedy  the  evil  by  a  wholesale 
decree  prohibiting  all  Castilians  from  riding  upon  mules !  In  prac- 
tice this  precious  decree,  like  other  villainous  prohibitory  laws  that 
try  to  prevent  honest  people  from  doing  what  they  have  a  per- 
fect right  to  do,  proved  so  vexatious  and  ineffective  witlial  that  it 
had  to  be  perpetually  fussed  with  and  tinkered.  One  year  you 
could  ride  a  mule  and  the  next  year  you  could  n't.  In  1492,  as 
we  shall  see,  Columbus  immortalized  one  of  these  patient  beasta 
by  riding  it  a  few  miles  from  Granada.  But  in  1494  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella  decreed  that  nobody  except  women,  children,  and 
clergymen  could  ride  on  mules,  —  "  dont  la  marche  est  beaucoup 
plus  douce  que  celle  des  chevaux  "  (Humboldt,  Examen  critique, 
tom.  iii.  p.  338).  This  edict  remained  in  force  in  1505,  so  that 
the  Discoverer  of  the  New  World,  the  inaugurator  of  the  greatest 
historic  event  since  the  birth  of  Christ,  could  not  choose  an  easy- 
going animal  for  the  comfort  of  his  weary  old  weather-shaken 
bones  without  the  bother  of  getting  a  special  edict  to  tit  his  case. 
Elieu,  quam  parva  sapientia  reyitur  mundus  1 


ii 


<t 


% 


846  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

good  sense  in  accepting  the  statement  of  the  curate 
of  Los  Palacios  as  decisive,  dating  as  it  does  the 
birth  of  Columbus  at  1436,  "  a  little  more  or  less." 
With  regard  to  the  place  where  the  great  discov- 
erer was  born  there  ought  to  be  no  dispute,  since 
we  have  his  own  most  explicit  and  unmistakable 
word  for  it,  as  I  shall  presently  show.  Neverthe- 
less there  has  been  no  end  of  dispute.  He  has 
been  claimed  by  as  many  places  as  Homer,^  but 
the  only  real  question  is  whether  he  was  born  in 
the  city  of  Genoa  or  in  some  neighbouring  village 
within  the  boundaries  of  the  Genoese  republic.  It 
is  easy  to  understand  how  doubt  has  arisen  on  this 
point,  if  we  trace  the  changes  of  residence  of  his 
family.  The  grandfather  of  Columbus  seems  to 
have  been  Giovanni  Colombo,  of  Terrarossa,  an  in- 
land hamlet  some  twenty  miles  east  by  north  from 

^  "  Nous  avons  d^montr^  1' inanity  des  theories  qui  le  font  naitre 
k  Pradello,  k  Cuccaro,  k  Cogoleto,  k  Savona,  k  Nervi,  k  Albis- 
sola,  k  Bogliasco,  k  Cosseria,  k  Finale,  k  Oneglia,  voire  meme  en 
Angleterre  ou  dans  I'isle  de  Corse."  Harrisse,  torn.  i.  p.  217. 
In  Cogoleto,  about  sixteen  miles  west  of  Genoa  on  the  Comiche 
road,  the  visitor  is  shown  a  house  where  Columbus  is  said  Rrst  to 
have  seen  the  light.  Upon  its  front  is  a  quaint  inscription  in 
which  the  discoverer  is  compared  to  the  dove  (Colomba)  which, 
when  sent  by  Noah  from  the  ark,  discovered  dry  land  amid  the 

the  waters :  — 

Con  generoso  ardir  dall'  Area  all'  onde 
Ubbidiente  il  vol  Colomba  preude, 
Corre,  s'  aggira,  terren  scopre,  e  froude 
D'  olivo  in  segno,  al  gran  No6  ne  rende. 
L'  imita  in  ci6  Colombo,  ne'  s'  asconde, 
E  da  sua  patria  il  mar  solcando  fende ; 
Terreno  al  fln  scoprendo  diede  fondo, 
Ofterendo  all'  Ispano  un  Nuovo  Mondo. 

This  house  is  or  has  been  mentioned  in  Baedeker's  Northern 
Italy  as  the  probable  birthplace,  along  with  Peschel's  absurd  date 
1450.  It  is  pretty  certain  that  Columbus  was  not  born  in  that 
house  or  in  Cogoleto.    See  Harrisse,  tom.  i.  pp.  148-155. 


1' 

1 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


347 


Genoa.     Giovanni's  son,  Domenico  Colombo,  was 
probably  born  at  Terrarossa,  and  moved  thence 
with  his  father,  somewhere  between  1430 
and  1445,  to  Quinto  al  Mare,  four  miles  Domenico^co- 
east  of  Genoa  on  the  coast.   All  the  f am-  chMge8*of 

•1  ill  T»    /•  residence. 

ily  seem  to  have  been  weavers.  iJetore 
1445,  but  how  many  years  before  is  not  known, 
Domenico  married  Susanna  Fontanai*ossa,  who  be- 
longed to  a  family  of  weavers,  probably  of  Quezzi, 
four  miles  northeast  of  Genoa.  Between  1448 
and  1451  Domenico,  with  his  wife  and  three  chil- 
dren, moved  into  the  city  of  Genoa,  where  he  be- 
came the  owner  of  a  house  and  was  duly  qualified 
as  a  citizen.  In  1471  Domenico  moved  to  Savona, 
thirty  miles  west  on  the  Corniche  road,  where  he 
set  up  a  weaving  establishment  and  also  kept  a 
tavern.  He  had  then  five  children,  Cristoforo, 
Giovanni,  Bartolommeo,  Giacorao,  and  a  daughter. 
Domenico  lived  in  Savona  till  1484.  At  that 
time  his  wife  and  his  son  Giovanni  were  dead, 
Giacomo  was  an  apprentice,  learning  the  weaver's 
trade,  Christopher  and  Bartholomew  had  long  been 
domiciled  in  Portugal,  the  daughter  had  married 
a  cheese  merchant  in  Genoa,  and  to  that  city 
Domenico  returned  in  the  autimin  of  1484,  and 
lived  there  until  his  death,  at  a  gfeat  age,  in  1499 
or  1500.  He  was  always  in  pecuniary  difficulties, 
and  died  poor  and  in  debt,  though  his  sons  seem 
to  have  sent  him  from  Portugal  and  Spain  such 
money  as  they  could  spare.^ 

The  reader  will  observe  that  Christopher  and 
his  two  next  brothers  were  born  before  the  family 

*  Harrisse,  torn.  i.  pp.  166-216. 


IMi 


I 


848 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


went  to  live  in  the  city  ot  Genoa.  It  lias  hence 
been  plausibly  inferred  that  they  were  born  either 
in  Quinto  or  in  Terrarcssa;  more  likely  the  lat- 
ter, since  both  Christopher  and  Bartholomew,  as 
well  as  their  father,  were  c  aled,  and  sometimes 
signed  themselves,  Columbus  or  Terrarossa.^  In 
this  opinion  the  most  indefatigabls  modern  inves- 
tigator, Harrisse,  agrees  with  Las  Casas.^  Never- 
theless, in  a  solemn  legal  instrument  executed  Feb- 
ruary 22,  1498,  establishing  a  mayorazgo,  or  right 
of  succession  to  his  estates  and  emoluments  in  the 
Indies,  Columbus  expressly  declares 
that  he  was  born  in  the  city  of  Genoa : 
"  I  enjoin  it  upon  my  son,  the  said  Don 
Diego,  or  whoever  may  inherit  the  said 
mayorazgo,  always  to  keep  and  maintain  in  the 
City  of  Genoa  one  person  of  our  lineage,  because 
from  thence  I  cme  and  in  it  I  was  born."  ^  I  do 
not  see  how  such  a  definite  and  positive  statement, 
occurring  in  such  a  document,  can  be  doubted  or 
explained  away.  It  seems  clear  that  the  son  was 
born  while   the  parents  were   dwelling  either  at 


Christopher 
tells  us  that 
he  was  born  in 
the  city  of 
Genoa. 


^  Harrisse,  torn.  i.  p.  188 ;   Vita  delV  Ammiraglio,  cap.  xi. 

2  "Fu^  este  varon  escogido  de  nacion  genov^s,  de  algun  lugar 
de  la  provincia  de  G^nova  ;  cual  f  uese,  donde  naci6  6  qu^  nombre 
tuTO  el  tal  lugar,  no  conata  la  verdad  dello  mds  de  que  se  solia 
llamar  dntes  que  llegase  al  estado  que  lleg6,  Cristobal  Colombo 
de  Terra-nibia  y  lo  niismo  su  lierraano  Bartolom^  Colon."  Las 
Casas,  Ilistoria  de  las  Indias,  torn.  i.  p.  42 ;  of.  Harrisse,  torn, 
i.  pp.  217-222. 

8  "  Mando  al  dicho  D.  Diego,  mi  hijo,  6  d  la  persona  que  here- 
dare  el  dicho  mayorazgo,  que  tenga  y  sostenga  siempre  en  la 
Ciudad  de  Ginova  una  persona  de  nuestro  linage  .  .  .  pues  que 
deUa  sail  y  en  ella  nact "  [italics  mine].  Navarrete,  Coleccioriy 
torn.  ii.  p.  232. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


349 


at 


Terrarossi  or  at  Quinto,  but  what  is  to  hinder  our 
Hupposing  that  the  event  might  have  happened 
when  the  mother  was  in  the  city  on  some  errand 
or  visit  ?  The  fact  that  Christopher  and  his  bro- 
ther were  often  styled  "  of  Terrarossa  "  does  not 
prove  that  the/  were  born  in  that  hamlet.  A  fain, 
ily  moving  thence  to  Quinto  and  to  Genoa  would 
stand  in  much  need  of  some  such  distinctive  epi- 
thet, because  the  name  Colombo  was  extremely 
common  in  that  part  of  Italy  ;  insomuch  that  the 
modern  historian,  who  prowls  among  the  archives 
of  those  towns,  must  have  a  care  lest  he  get  hold 
of  the  wrong  person,  and  thus  open  a  fresh  and 
prolific  source  of  confusion.  This  has  happened 
more  than  once. 

On  the  whole,  then,  it  seems  most  probable  that 
the  Discoverer  of  America  was  born  in  the  city  of 
Genoa  in  1436,  or  not  much  later.  Of  his  child- 
hood we  know  next  to  nothing.  Las  Casas  tells 
us  that  he  studied  at  the  University  of  Pavia  and 
acquired  a  good  knowledge  of  Latin.^  This  has 
been  doubted,  as  incompatible  with  the  statement 
cf  Columbus  that  he  began  a  seafaring  life  at  the 
age  of  fourteen.  It  is  clear,  however,  Christopher's 
that  the  earlier  years  of  Columbus,  be-  ^"^^  ^^*"" 
fore  his  departure  for  Portugal,  were  not  all 
spent  in  seafaring.  Somewhere,  if  not  at  Pavia, 
he  not  only  learned  Latin,  but  found  time  to 
study  geography,  with  a  little  astronomy  and 
mathematics,  and  to  become  an  expert  draughts- 
man. He  seems  to  have  gone  to  and  fro  upon  the 
Mediterranean  in  merchant  voyages,  now  and  then 
^  Las  Casas,  Historia,  torn.  i.  p.  46. 


I 


i 


850 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


taking  a  hand  in  sharp  scrimmages  with  Mussul. 
man  pirates.^  In  the  intervals  oi  this  adventu- 
rous life  he  was  probably  to  be  found  in  Genoa, 
earning  his  bread  by  making  maps  and  charts,  for 
which  there  was  a  great  and  growing  demand. 
About  1470,  having  become  noted  for  his  skill  in 
such  work,  he  followed  his  younger  brother  Bar- 
tholomew  to    Lisbon,^    whither    Prince    Henry's 

^  The  reader  must  beware,  however,  of  some  cf  the  stories  of 
adventure  attaching  to  this  part  of  his  life,  even  where  they  are 
confirmed  by  Las  Casas.  They  evidently  rest  upon  hearsay,  and 
the  incidents  are  so  confused  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  extract 
the  kernel  of  truth. 

*  The  date  1470  rests  upon  a  letter  of  Columbus  to  King  Fer- 
dinand of  Aragon  in  May,  1505.  He  says  that  God  must  have 
directed  him  into  the  service  of  Spain  by  a  kind  of  miracle,  since 
he  had  already  been  in  Portugal,  whose  king  was  more  interested 
than  any  other  sovereign  in  making  discoveries,  and  yet  God  closed 
his  eyes,  his  ears,  and  all  his  senses  to  such  a  degree  that  in  four- 
teen years  Columbus  could  not  prevail  upon  him  to  lend  aid  to  his 
scheme.  "  Dije  milagrosamente  porque  fui  A  aportar  ^  Portugal, 
adonde  el  Rey  de  alU  entendia  en  el  descubrir  mas  que  otro : 
^1  le  ataj<5  la  vista,  oido  y  todos  los  sentidos,  que  en  catorce  aflos 
no  le  pude  hacer  entender  lo  que  yo  dije."  Las  Casas,  op.  cit. 
tom.  iii.  p.  187 ;  Navarrete,  tom.  iii.  p.  528.  Now  it  is  known 
that  Columbus  finally  left  Portugal  late  in  1484,  or  very  early  in 
1485,  so  that  fourteen  years  would  carry  us  back  to  before  1471 
for  the  first  arrival  of  Columbus  in  that  country.  M.  Harrisse 
((q>.  cit.  tom.  i.  p.  263)  is  unnecessarily  troubled  by  the  fact  that 
the  same  person  was  not  king  of  Portugal  during  the  whole  of 
that  period.  Alfonso  V.  (brother  of  Henry  the  Navigator)  died 
in  1481,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son  John  II. ;  but  during  a 
considerable  part  of  the  time  between  1475  and  1481  the  royal 
authority  was  exercised  by  the  latter.  Both  kings  were  more  in- 
terested in  making  discoveries  than  any  other  European  eover- 
eigns.  Which  king  did  Columbus  mean  ?  Obviously  his  words 
were  used  loosely ;  he  was  too  much  preoccupied  to  be  careful 
about  trifles ;  he  probably  had  John  in  his  noind,  and  did  not 
bother  himself  about  Alfonso  ;  King  Ferdinand,  to  whom  he  was 
writing,  did  not  need  tc  have  such  points  minutely  specified,  and 


I 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  LYDJES. 


851 


m 

71 
nsae 


and 


undertakings  had  attracted  able  navigjitors  and 
learned  geographers  until  that  city  had  come  to 
be  the  chief  centre  of  nautical  science  in  Europe. 

could  nnderatand  an  elliptical  statement ;  and  the  fact  stated  by 
Columbus  was  simply  that  during-  a  residence  of  fourteen  years 
in  Portugal  he  had  not  been  able  to  enlist  even  that  enterprising 
government  in  behalf  of  his  novel  scheme. 

In  the  town  archives  of  Savona  we  find  Christopher  Columbus 
^witnessing  a  document  March  20, 1472,  endorsing  a  kind  of  prom- 
issory note  for  his  father  August  26,  1472,  and  joining  with  his 
mother  and  his  next  brother  Giovanni,  August  7,  1473,  in  relin- 
quishing all  claims  to  the  house  in  Genoa  sold  by  his  father  Do- 
menico  by  deed  of  that  date,  it  will  be  remembered  that  Domen- 
ico  had  moved  from  Genoa  to  Savona  in  1471.  From  these 
documents  (which  are  all  printed  in  his  Christophe  Colomb,  tom. 
ii.  pp.  419,  420,  424-420)  M.  Harrisse  concludes  that  Christophcv 
cannot  have  gone  to  Portugal  until  after  August  7,  1473.  Prob- 
ably not,  so  far  as  to  be  domiciled  there ;  but  inasmuch  as  he  had 
long  been  a  sailor,  why  should  he  not  have  been  in  Portugal,  or 
upon  the  African  coast  in  a  Portuguese  ship,  in  1470  and  1471^ 
and  nevertheless  have  been  with  his  parents  in  Savona  in  1472 
and  part  of  1473  ?  His  own  statement  "  fourteen  years  "  is  not 
to  be  set  aside  on  such  slight  grounds  as  this.  Furthermore,  from 
the  fact  that  Barthou>mew'3  name  is  not  signed  to  the  deed  ot 
August  7,  1473,  M.  Harrisse  infers  that  he  was  then  a  minor ;  i.  e. 
under  five  and  twenty.  But  it  seems  to  me  more  likely  that  Bar- 
tholomew was  already  domiciled  at  Lisbon,  since  we  are  expressly 
told  by  two  good  contemporary  authorities  —  both  of  them  Geno- 
ese writers  withal  —  that  he  moved  to  Lisbon  and  began  making 
maps  there  at  an  earlier  date  than  Christopher.  See  Antonio 
Gallo,  De  navigatione  Columbi  per  inaccessum  antea  Oceanum  Com- 
mentariolus,  apud  Muratori,  tom.  xxiii.  col.  301-304 ;  Giustiniani, 
Psalteriutn,  Milan,  1516  (annotation  to  Psalm  xix.) ;  Harrisse, 
Bibiiotheca  Americana  Vetustisshna,  No.  88.  To  these  statements 
M.  Harrisse  objects  that  he  finds  (in  Belloro,  Notizie,  p.  8)  men- 
tion of  a  document  dated  Savona,  June  1(5,  1480,  in  which  Do- 
menico  Colombo  gives  a  power  of  attorney  to  his  son  Bar- 
tholomew to  act  for  him  in  some  matter.  The  document  itself, 
however,  is  not  forthcoming,  and  the  notice  cited  by  M.  Harrisse 
really  affords  no  ground  for  the  assumption  that  Bartholomew 
was  in  1480  domiciled  at  Savona  or  at  Genoa. 


852 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA, 


m 


ill 


Las  Casas  assures  us  that  Bartholomew  was  quite 
Christopher  ^qual  to  ChristophcF  as  a  sailor,  and  sur- 
mew^tLi"^'*^  passed  him  in  the  art  of  making  maps 
^°-  and  globes,  as  well  as  in   the   beauty 

of  his  handwriting.^  In  Portugal,  as  before  iti 
Italy,  the  work  of  the  brothers  Columbus  was  an. 
alternation  of  map-making  on  land  and  adventure 
on  the  sea.  We  have  Christopher's  own  word  for 
it  that  he  sailed  with  more  than  one  of  those  Por- 
tuguese expeditions  down  the  African  coast ;  ^  and  I 
think  it  not  altogether  unlikely  that  he  may  have 
been  with  Santarem  and  Escobar  in  their  famous 
voyage  of  1471. 

He  had  not  been  long  in  Portugal  before  he 
found  a  wife.  We  have  already  met  the  able 
Italian  navigator,  Bartholomew  Perestrelo,  who 
was  sent  by  Prince  Henry  to  the  island  of  Porto 
Santo  with  Zarco  and  Vaz,  about  1425.  In  recog- 
nition of  eminent  services  Prince  Henry  after- 
wards, in  1446,  appointed  him  governor 

Philippa  '      1  x  o 

MoSiz  de        of  Porto  Santo.    Perestrelo  died  in  1457, 
leaving  a  widow  (his  second  wife,  Isa- 
bella Moniz)  and  a  charming  daughter  Philippa,^ 

^  Las  Casas,  op.  cit.  torn.  i.  p.  224 ;  torn.  ii.  p.  80.  He  pos- 
sessed many  maps  and  documents  by  both  the  brothers. 

"^  "Spesse  volte  navigando  da  Lisbona  a  Guinea,"  etc.  Vita 
delV  Ammiraglio,  cap.  iv.  The  "original  authority  is  Columbus's 
marginal  note  in  his  copy  of  the  Imago  Mundi  of  AUiacus,  now 
preserved  in  the  Colorabina  at  Seville :  "  Nota  quod  sepius  navi- 
gando ex  Ulixbona  ad  austrum  in  Guineam,  notavi  cum  diligentia 
viam,  etc.  Compare  the  allusions  to  Guinea  in  his  letters,  Na- 
varrete,  Coleccion,  tom.  i.  pp.  55,  71,  101. 

*  There  are  some  vexed  questions  concerning  this  lady  and  the 
connections  between  the  Mofiiz  and  Perestrelo  families,  for  which 
see  Harrisse,  tom.  i.  pp.  267-292. 


irl 


UL 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


353 


wliom  Columbus  is  said  to  have  first  met  at  a  reli- 
gious service  in  the  chapel  of  the  convent  of  All 
Saints  at  Lisbon.  From  the  accounts  of  his  per- 
sonal appearance,  given  by  Las  Casas  and  others 
who  knew  him,  we  can  well  understand  how  Co- 
lumbus should  have  won  the  heart  of  this  lady,  so 
far  above  him  at  that  time  in  social  position.  He 
was  a  man  of  noble  and  commanding  presence, 
tall  and  powerfully  built,  with  fair  ruddy 
complexion  and  keen  blue-gray  eyes  that  p^Irance  T 
easily  kindled  ;  while  his  waving  white 
hair  must  have  been  quite  picturesque.  His  man- 
ner was  at  once  courteous  and  cordial  and  his  con- 
versation charming,  so  that  strangers  were  quickly 
won,  and  in  friends  who  knew  him  well  he  inspired 
strong  affection  and  respect.^  There  was  an  inde- 
finable air  of  authority  about  him,  as  befitted  a 
man  of  great  heart  and  lofty  thoughts.^  Out  of 
those  kindling  eyes  looked  a  grand  and  poetic  soul, 
touched  with  that  divine  spark  of  religious  enthu- 
siasm which  makes  true  genius. 

The  acquaintance  between  Columbus  and  Phi- 
lippa  Moniz  de  Perestrelo  was  not  long  in  ripening 
into  affection,  for  they  were  married  in  1473.  As 
there  was  a  small  estate  at  Porto  Santo,  his  marringe, 
Columbus  went  home  thither  with  his  Si'fand^' 
bride  to  live  for  a  while  in  quiet  and  se-  ^*"***  ^*"*°* 
elusion.    Such  repose  we  may  believe  to  have  been 

^  Las  Casas,  Htstoria,  torn.  i.  p.  43.  He  describes  Bartholomew 
as  not  unlike  his  brother,  but  not  so  taU,  less  affable  in  manner, 
and  more  stern  in  disposition,  id.  torn.  ii.  p.  80. 

'■^  ' '  Christoval  Colon  .  .  .  persona  de  pTan  corazon  y  altos  pen- 
samientos."     Mariana,  Historia  de  Espana,  torn.  viii.  p.  841. 


1    I 


854 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


favourable  to  meditation,  and  on  that  little  island, 
three  hundred  miles  out  on  the  mysterious  ocean, 
we  are  told  that  the  great  scheme  of  sailing  west- 
ward to  the  Indies  first  took  shape  in  the  mind 
of  Columbus.^  His  father-in-law  Perestrelo  had 
left  a  quantity  of  sailing  charts  and  nautical 
notes,  and  these  Columbus  diligently  studied, 
while  ships  on  thpir  way  to  and  from  Guinea  every 
now  and  then  stopped  at  the  island,  and  one  car 
easily  imagine  the  eager  discussions  that  mus 
have  been  held  over  the  great  commercial  probleu 
of  the  age,  —  how  far  south  that  African  coast  ex- 
tended and  whether  there  was  any  likelihood  of 
ever  finding  an  end  to  it. 

How  long  Columbus  lived  upon  Porto  Santo  is 
not  known,  but  he  seems  to  have  gone  from  time 
to  time  back  to  Lisbon,  and  at  length  to  have 
made  his  home  —  or  in  the  case  of  such  a  rover 
we  might  better  say  his  headquarters  —  in  that 
city.  We  come  now  to  a  document  of  supreme 
importance  for  our  narrative.  Paolo  del  Pozzo  dei 
Toscanelli,  born  at  Florence  in  1397,  was  one  of 
the  most  famous  astronomers  and  cosmographers  of 
his  time,  a  man  to  whom  it  was  natural  that  ques- 
tions involving  the  size  and  shape  of  the  earth 

^  Upon  that  island  his  eldest  son  Diego  was  born.  This  whole 
story  of  the  life  upon  Porto  Santo  and  its  relation  to  the  genesis  of 
Colombus's  scheme  is  told  very  explicitly  by  Las  Casas,  who  says 
that  it  was  told  to  him  by  Diego  Columbus  at  Barcelona  in  1519, 
when  they  were  waiting  upon  Charles  V.,  just  elected  Emperor 
and  about  to  start  for  Aachen  to  be  crowned.  And  yet  there  are 
modern  critics  who  are  disposed  to  deny  the  whole  story.  (See 
Harrisse,  torn.  i.  p.  298.)  The  grounds  for  doubt  are,  however, 
extremely  trivial  when  confronted  with  Las  Casas,  Historia,  ton^ 
L  p.  54. 


•■•'"■"^-"-"■^"■'' 


-"j^f.\=-:.-. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


355 


should  be  referred.  To  him  Alfonso  V.  of  Portu- 
gal made  application,  through  a  gentle- 
man of  the  royal  household,  Fernando  asks  advice  of 
Martinez,  who  happened  to  be  an  old  Mtronomer 
friend  of  Toscanelli.  What  Alfonso 
wanted  to  know  was  whether  there  (iould  be  a 
shorter  oceanic  route  to  the  Indies  than  that  which 
his  captains  were  seeking  by  following  the  African 
coast ;  if  so,  he  begged  that  Toscanelli  would  ex- 
plain the  nature  and  direction  of  such  a  route. 
The  Florentine  astronomer  replied  with  the  letter 
presently  to  be  quoted  in  full,  dated  June  25, 
1474 ;  apd  along  with  the  letter  he  sent  to  the  king 
a  sailing  chart,  exhibiting  his  conception  of  the 
Atlantic  ocean,  with  Europe  on  the  east  and  Cathay 
on  the  west.  The  date  of  this  letter  is  eloquent. 
It  was  early  in  1472  that  Santarem  and  Escobar 
brought  back  to  Lisbon  the  news  that  beyond  the 
Gold  Coast  the  African  shore  turned  southwards 
and  stretched  away  in  that  direction  beyond  the 
equator.  As  I  have  already  observed,  this  was 
the  moment  when  the  question  as  to  the  possibility 
of  a  shorter  route  was  likely  to  arise ;  ^  and  this 
is  precisely  the  question  we  find  the  king  of  Portu- 
gal putting  to  Toscanelli  some  time  before  the 
middle  of  1474.  Now  about  this  same  time,  or 
not  long  afterwards,  we  find  Columbus  himself 
appealing  to  Toscanelli.  An  aged  Florentine  mer- 
chant, Lorenzo  Giraldi,  then  settled  in  Lisbon, 
was  going  back  to  his  native  city  for  a  visit,  and 
to  him  Columbus  entrusted  a  letter  for  the  eminent 
astronomer.  He  received  the  following  answer : 
1  See  above,  p.  330. 


.,  «).piib. 


356 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


ToBcanelli's 
first  letter  to 
Columbus. 


"Paul,  the  physicist,  to  Christopher  Columbus 
greeting.^  I  perceive  your  great  and  noble  desire 
to  go  to  the  place  where  the  spices  grow ;  where- 
fore in  reply  to  a  letter  of  yours,  I  send 
you  a  copy  of  another  letter,  which  I 
wrote  a  few  days  ago  [or  some  time 
ago]  to  a  friend  of  mine,  a  gentleman  of  the 
household  of  the  most  gracious  king  of  Portugal 
before  the  wars  of  Castile,^  in  reply  to  another, 
which  by  command  of  His  Highness  he  wrote  me 
concerning  that  matter:  and  I  send  you  another 
sailing  chart,  similar  to  the  one  I  sent  him,  by 
which  your  demands  will  be  satisfied.  The  copy 
of  that  letter  of  mine  is  as  follows :  — 

" '  Paul,  the  physicist,  to  Fernando   Martinez, 
canon,  at  Lisbon,  greeting.^    I  was  glad  to  hear 


^  I  translate  this  prologue  from  the  Italian  text  of  the  Vita 
delV  Ammiraglio,  cap.  viii.  The  original  Latin  has  nowhere  been 
found.  A  Spanish  version  of  the  whole  may  be  found  in  Laa 
Casas,  Historia,  torn.  i.  pp.  92-96.  Las  Casas,  by  a  mere  slip  of 
the  pen,  calls  "  Paul,  the  physicist,"  Marco  Paulo,  and  fifty  years 
later  Mariana  calls  him  Marco  Polo,  physician :  "  por  aviso  que 
le  di6  un  cierto  Marco  Polo  medico  Florentin,"  etc.  Historia  de 
Espana,  torn.  viii.  p.  343.     Thus  step  hy  step  doth  error  grow. 

'■^  He  means  that  his  friend  Martinez  has  been  a  member  of 
King  Alfonso's  household  ever  since  the  time  before  the  civil  wars 
that  began  with  the  attempted  deposition  of  Henry  IV.  in  1465 
and  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  come  to  an  end  before  the  death 
of  that  prince  in  December,  1474.  See  Humboldt,  Examen  cri- 
iique,  torn.  i.  p.  225. 

^  I  translate  this  enclosed  letter  from  the  original  Latin  text, 
as  found,  a  few  years  ago,  in  the  handwriting  of  Columbus  upon 
the  fly-leaves  of  his  copy  of  the  Historia  rerum  ubiqne  gestarum 
of  ^neas  Sylvius  Piecolomini  (Pope  Pius  II.),  published  at  Ven- 
ice in  1477,  in  folio,  and  now  preserved  in  the  Colombina  at 
Seville.  This  Latin  text  is  given  by  H.arrisse,  in  his  Fernand 
Colomb,  pp.  17S-180,  and  also  (with  more  strict  regard  to  tha 


I 


1i 


SKK>ST  VOYAfJE   ACKOSS   THE   ATLANTIC 


/ 


r 


SKETCH    OF  TOSCAN'KI.LI'S   MAP,  SENT    lO    POK  .'UGAL   IX   1474.  AM)   USED    T.V   COr.r.MHUS  IN    HIS    KMiST  VOVACE   ACROSS   THE   ATLANTIC 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


357 


of  your  intimacy  and  favour  with  your  most  noble 
and  illustrious  king.     I  have  formerly  xoacaneiu's 
spoken  with  you  about  a  shorter  route  fo?me/ letter 
to  the  places  of  Spices  by  ocean  navi-  *n,?JjYed'in  ~ 
gation  than  that  which  you  are  pursu-  Ko'ium-'^**' 
ing  by  Guinea.    The  most  gracious  king  ^"'" 
now  desires  from  me  some  statement,  or  rather  an 
exhibition  to  the  eye,  so  that  even  slightly  educated 
persons   can   grasp   and   comprehend  that   route. 
Although  I  am  well  aware  that  this  can  be  proved 
from  the  spherical  shape  of  the  earth,  neverthe- 
less, in  order  to  make  the  point  clearer  and  to 
facilitate  the  enterprise,  I  have  decided  to  exhibit 
that  route  by  means  of  a  sailing  chart.     I  there- 
fore send  to  his  majesty  a  chart  made  by  my  own 
hands,^  upon  which  are  laid  down  your  coasts,  and 

abbreviations  of  the  original)  in  his  Bibliotheca  Americana  Vetus- 
tissima  —  Additions,  Paris,  1872,  pp.  xvi.-xviii.  Very  likely 
Columbus  had  occasion  to  let  the  original  MS.  go  out  of  his  hands, 
and  so  preserved  a  copy  of  it  upon  the  fly-leaves  of  one  of  his 
books.  These  same  fly-leaves  contain  extracts  from  Josephus  and 
Saint  Augustine.  The  reader  will  rightly  infer  from  my  transla- 
tion that  the  astronomer's  Latin  was  somewhat  rugged  and  lack- 
ing in  literary  grace.  Apparently  he  was  anxious  to  jot  down 
quickly  what  he  had  to  say,  and  get  back  to  his  work. 

^  A  sketch  of  this  most  memorable  of  maps  is  given  oppo- 
site. Columbus  carried  it  with  him  upon  his  first  voyage,  and 
shaped  his  course  in  accordance  with  it  Las  Casas  afterwards 
had  it  in  his  possession  {Hist,  de  las  Indias,  tom.  i.  pp.  96,  279). 
It  has  since  been  lost,  that  is  to  say,  it  may  still  be  in  existence, 
but  nobody  knows  where.  But  it  has  been  so  well  described  that 
the  work  of  restoring  its  general  outlines  is  not  difficult  and 
has  several  times  been  done.  The  sketch  here  given  is  taken 
from  Win.sor  (Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist.,  ii.  103),  who  takes  it  from 
Das  Ausland,  1807,  p.  T).  Another  restoration  may  be  found  in 
St.  Martin's  Atlas,  pi.  ix.  This  map  '.vas  the  source  of  the  west- 
ern part  of  Martin  Behaini's  globe,  as  given  below,  p.  422. 


858  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

the  Islands  from  which  you  must  begin  to  shape  your 
course  steadily  westward,  and  the  places  at  which 
you  are  bound  to  arrive,  and  how  far  fropi  the 
pole  or  from  the  equator  you  ought  to  keep  away, 
and  through  how  much  space  or  through  how  many 
miles  you  are  to  arrive  a,t  places  most  fertile  in  aU 
sorts  of  spices  and  gems ;  and  do  not  wonder  at 
my  calling  west  the  parts  where  the  spices  are, 
whereas  they  are  commonly  called  east^  because  to 
persons  sailing  persistently  westward  those  parts 
will  be  found  by  courses  on  the  under  side  of  thi 
earth.  For  if  [you  go]  by  land  and  by  routes  on 
this  upper  side,  they  will  always  be  found  in  tho 
east.  The  straight  lines  drawn  lengthwise  upon 
the  map  indicate  distance  from  east  to  west,  while 
the  transverse  lines  show  distances  from  south  to 
north.  I  have  drawn  upon  the  map  various  places 
upon  which  you  may  come,  for  the  better  informa- 
tion of  the  navigators  in  case  of  their  arriving, 
whether  through  accident  of  wind  or  what  not,  at 
some  different  place  from  what  they  had  expected  ; 
but  partly  in  order  that  they  may  show  the  inhab- 
itants that  they  have  some  knowledge  of  their 
country,  which  is  sure  to  be  a  pleasant  thing.  It 
is  said  that  none  but  merchants  dwell  in  the 
islands.^  For  so  great  there  is  the  number  of  nav- 
igators with  their  merchandise  that  in  all  the  rest 
of  the  world  there  are  not  so  many  as  in  one  very 
splendid  port  called  Zaiton.^     For  they  say  that  a 

'  ^  All  the  description  that  foUowa  is  taken  by  Toscanelli  from 

i  the  book  of  Marco  Polo. 

5  '■'  On  modern  maps  usually  called  Chang-chow,  about  100  mileil 

5  B.  W,  from  Fou-chow. 


m 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


859 


hundred  great  ships  of  pepper  unload  in  that  port 
every  year,  besides  other  ships  bringing  other 
spices.  That  country  is  very  populous  and  very 
rich,  with  a  multitude  of  provinces  and  kingdoms 
and  cities  without  number,  under  one  sovereign 
who  is  called  the  Great  Khan,  which  name  signi- 
fies King  of  Kings,  whose  residence  is  for  the  most 
part  in  the  province  of  Cathay.  His  predecessors 
two  hundred  years  ago  desired  an  alliance  with 
Christendom  ;  they  sent  to  the  pope  and  asked  for 
a  number  of  persons  learned  in  the  faith,  that  they 
might  be  enlightened ;  but  those  who  were  sent, 
having  encountered  obstacles  on  the  way,  returned.^ 
Even  in  the  time  of  Eugenius  ^  there  came  one  to 
Eugenius  and  made  a  declaration  concerning  their 
great  goodwill  toward  Christians,  and  I  had  a  long 
talk  with  him  about  many  tilings,  about  the  great 
size  of  their  royal  palaces  and  the  remarkable 
length  and  breadth  of  their  rivers,  and  the  multi- 
tude of  cities  on  the  banks  of  the  rivers,  such  that 
on  one  river  there  are  about  two  hundred  cities, 
with  marble  bridges  very  long  and  wide  and  every- 
where adorned  with  columns.  This  country  is 
worth  seeking  by  the  Latins,  not  only  because 
great  treasures  may  be  obtained  from  it,  —  gold, 
silver,  and  all  sorts  of  jewels  and  spices,  —  but  on 
account  of  its  learned  men,  philosophers,  and 
skilled  astrologers,  and  [in  order  that  we  may  see] 
with  what  arts  and  devices  so  powerful  and  splen- 
did a  province  is  governed,  and  also  [how]  they 
conduct  their  wars.     This  for  some  sort  of  answer 

^  I  have  given  an  account  of  this  mission,  above,  p.  281. 
^  Eugenius  IV.,  pt     >  from  14<31  to  1447. 


M 


360  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

to  his  request,  so  far  as  haste  and  my  occupations 
have  allowed,  ready  in  future  to  make  further 
response  to  his  royal  majesty  as  much  as  he  may 
wish.     Given  at  Florence  25th  June,  1474.' 

"  From  ^  the  city  of  Lisbon  due  west  there  are 
26  spaces  marked  on  the  map,  each  of  which  con- 
coneiusionof  ^^ins  250  milcs,  as  far  as  the  very  great 
flrTSer  to  ^^d  splcudid  city  of  Quinsay.2  For  it 
Columbus.  jg  ^  hundred  miles  in  circumference  and 
has  ten  bridges,  and  its  name  means  City  of  Hea- 
ven, and  many  wonderful  things  are  told  about  it 
and  about  the  multitude  of  its  arts  and  revenues. 
This  space  is  almost  a  third  part  of  the  whole 
sphere.  That  city  is  in  the  province  of  Mangi,  or 
near  the  province  of  Cathay  in  which  land  is  the 
royal  residence.  But  from  the  island  of  Antilia, 
which  you  know,  to  the   very  splendid  island  of 

1  This  paragraph  is  evidently  the  conclusion  of  the  letter  to 
Columbus,  and  not  a  part  of  the  letter  to  Martinez,  which  has  just 
ended  with  the  date.  In  Vita  delV  Ammiraglio  the  two  letters 
are  mixed  together. 

^  On  modern  maps  Hangp-chow.  After  1127  that  city  was  for 
some  time  the  capital  of  China,  and  Marco  Polo's  name  Quinsay 
represents  the  Chinese  word  King-sse  or  "  capital,"  now  generally 
applied  to  Peking.  Marco  Polo  calls  it  the  finest  and  noblest 
city  in  the  world.  It  appears  that  he  does  not  overstate  the  cir- 
cumference of  its  walls  at  100  Chinese  miles  or  li,  equivalent  to 
about  30  English  miles.  It  has  greatly  diminished  since  Polo's 
time,  while  other  cities  have  grown.  Toscanelli  was  perhaps 
afraid  to  repeat  Polo's  figure  as  to  the  number  of  stone  bridges ; 
Polo  says  there  were  12,000  of  them,  high  enough  for  ships  to 
paas  under !  We  thus  see  how  his  Venetian  fellow-citizens  came 
to  nickname  him  "  Messer  Marco  Milione."  As  Colonel  Yule  says, 
"  I  believe  we  must  not  bring  Marco  to  book  for  the  literal  accu- 
racy of  his  statements  as  to  the  bridges ;  but  all  travellers  have 
noticed  tlie  number  and  elegance  of  the  bridges  of  cut  stone  in 
this  part  of  China."    Marco  Polo^  vol.  ii.  p.  144. 


V 


\\ 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


361 


Cipango^  there  are  ten  spaces.  For  that  island 
abounds  in  gold,  pearls,  and  precious  stones,  and 
they  cover  the  temples  and  palaces  with  solid  gold. 
So  through  the  unknown  parts  of  the  route  the 
stretches  of  sea  to  be  traversed  are  not  great. 
Many  things  might  perhaps  have  been  stated  more 
clearly,  but  one  who  duly  considers  what  I  have 
said  will  be  able  to  work  out  the  rest  for  himself. 
Farewell,  most  esteemed  one." 

Some  time  after  the  receipt  of  this  letter  Co- 
lumbus wrote  again  to  Toscanelli,  apparently  send- 
ing him  either  some  charts  of  his  own,  or  some 
notes,  or  something  bearing  upon  the  subject  in 
hand.  No  such  letter  is  preserved,  but  Toscanelli 
replied  as  follows  :  — 

"  Paul,  the  physicist,  to  Christopher  Columbus 
greeting.^  I  have  received  your  letters,  with  the 
things  which  you  sent  me,  for  which  I  thank  you 
very  much.   I  regard  as  noble  and  grand 

^  ^  ~  rwi  111. 

,       (•        -I'         n  ,    ,  ,     TOBcanelli's 

your  project  oi  sailing  trom  east  to  west  second  tetter 

-,.  ,         .1        .■,...  .         .11    to  Columbus. 

according  to  the  indications  furnished 
by  the  map  which  I  sent  you,  and  which  would  ap- 
pear still  more  plainly  upon  a  sphere.    I  am  much 
pleased  to  see  that  I  have  been  well  understood, 
and  that  the  voyage  has  become  not  only  possible 

^  For  Cipango,  or  Japan,  see  Yule's  Marco  Polo,  vol.  ii.  pp.  195- 
207.  The  venerable  astronomer's  style  of  composition  is  amus- 
ing. He  sets  out  to  demonstrate  to  Columbus  that  the  part  of  the 
voyage  to  be  accomplished  through  new  and  unfamiliar  stretches 
of  the  Atlantic  is  not  great ;  but  he  is  so  full  of  the  glories  of 
Cathay  and  Cipango  that  he  keeps  reverting  to  that  subject,  to 
the  manifest  detriment  of  his  exposition.  His  argument,  how- 
ever, is  perfectly  clear. 

^  The  original  of  this  letter  is  not  forthcoming.  I  translate 
from  Vita  dell'  Ammiraglio,  cap.  viii. 


862  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

but  certain,*  fraught  with  honour  as  it  must  be, 
and  inestimable  gain,  and  most  lofty  fame  among 
all  Christian  people.  You  cannot  take  in  all  that 
it  means  except  by  actual  experience,  or  without 
such  copious  and  accurate  information  as  I  have 
had  from  eminent  and  learned  men  who  have  come 
from  those  places  to  the  Roman  court,  and  from 
merchants  who  have  traded  a  long  time  in  those 
paits,  persons  whose  word  is  to  be  believed  (per- 
sone  di  grande  autorlta).  When  that  voyage 
shall  be  accomplished,  it  will  be  a  voyage  to  pow- 
erful kingdoms,  and  to  cities  and  provinces  most 
wealthy  and  noble,  abounding  in  all  sorts  of  things 
most  desired  by  us  ;  I  mean,  with  all  kinds  of 
spices  and  jewels  in  great  abundance.  It  wiU  also 
be  advantageous  for  those  kings  and  princes  who 
are  eager  to  have  dealings  and  make  alliances 
with  the  Christians  of  our  countries,  and  to  learn 
from  the  erudite  men  of  these  parts,'-^  as  well  in 
religion  as  in  all  other  branches  of  knowledge. 
For  these  reasons,  and  many  others  that  might  be 
mentioned,  I  do  not  wonder  that  you,  who  are  of 
great  courage,  and  the  whole  Portuguese  nation, 
which  has  always  had  men  distinguished  in  all  such 
enterprises,  are  now  inflamed  with  desire  ^  to  exe- 
cute the  said  voyage." 

^  Yet  poor  old  Toscanolli  did  not  live  to  see  it  accomplished ; 
he  died  in  1482,  before  Columbus  left  Portugal. 

"^  That  is,  of  Europe,  and  especially  of  Italy.  Toscanelli  again 
refers  to  Kublai  Khan's  message  to  the  pope  which  —  more  or 
less  mixed  up  with  the  vague  notions  about  Prester  John  —  had  evi- 
dently left  a  deep  impression  upon  the  European  mind.  In  trans- 
lating the  above  sentence  I  have  somewhat  retrenched  its  exces- 
sive verbiage  without  affecting  the  meaning. 

'  In  including  the  "whole  Portuguese  nation"  as  feeling  thia 


*  THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


363 


These  letters  are  intensely  interesting,  especially 
the  one  to  Martinez,  which  reveals  the  fact  that 
as  early  as  1474  the '  notion  that  a  westward  route 
to  the  Indies  would  be  shorter  than  the  southward 
route  had  somehow  been  suggested  to  Alfonso 
V. ;  and  had,  moreover,  sufficiently  arrested  his 
attention  to  lead  him  to  make  inquiries  ^,,0  fl„t  g»g. 
of  the  most  eminent  astronomer  within  grbSeM^ofT 
reach.  Who  could  have  suggested  thia  To^fteT^was 
notion  to  the  king  of  Portugal?  Was  '^coiumbu.? 
it  Columbus,  the  trained  mariner  and  map-maker, 
who  might  lately  have  been  pondering  the  theo- 
ries of  Ptolemy  and  Mela  as  affected  by  the  voy- 
age of  Santarera  and  Escobar,  and  whose  connec- 
tion with  the  MoRiz  and  Perestrelo  families  would 
now  doubtless  facilitate  his  access  to  the  court? 
On  some  accounts  this  may  seem  probable,  espe- 
cially if  we  bear  in  mind  Columbus's  own  state- 
ment  implying  that  his  appeals  to  the  crown  dated 
almost  from  the  beginning  of  his  fourteen  years 
in  Portugal. 

All   the   circumstances,   however,   seem    to   be 
equally  consistent  with   the  hypothesis  that   the 
first  suggestion  of  the  westward  route 
may  have  come  from  Toscanelli  himself,  was  tobc». 
through  the  medium  of  the  canon  Mar- 
tinez, who  had  for  so  many  years  been  a  member 
of  King  Alfonso's  household.     The  words  at  the 
beginning  of  the  letter  lend  some  probability  to 
this  view :    "  I   have  formerly   spoken   with   you 
about  a  shorter  route  to  the  places  of  Spices  by 

desire,  the  good  a8tronoiner''s  enthusiasm  again  runs  away  with 
him. 


364 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA.* 


I 


ocean  navigation  than  that  which  you  are  pursu- 
ing by  Guinea."  It  was  accordingly  earlier  than 
1474  —  how  much  earlier  does  not  appear  —  that 
such  discussions  between  Toscanelli  and  Martinez 
must  probably  have  come  to  the  ears  of  King 
Alfonso  ;  and  now,  very  likely  owing  to  the  voy- 
age of  Santarem  and  Escobar,  that  monarch  began 
to  think  it  worth  while  to  seek  for  further  infor- 
mation, "  an  exhibition  to  the  eye,"  so  that  maii- 
ners  not  learned  in  astronomy  like  Toscanelli 
might  "grasp  and  comprehend"  the  shorter  route 
suggested.  It  is  altogether  probaljle  that  the  Flor- 
entine astronomer,  who  was  seventy-seven  years 
old  when  he  wrote  this  letter,  had  already  for  a 
long  time  entertained  the  idea  of  a  westward 
route ;  and  a  man  in  whom  the  subject  aroused  so 
much  enthusiasm  could  hardly  have  been  reticent 
about  it.  It  is  not  likely  that  Martinez  was  the 
only  person  to  whom  he  descanted  ^  upon  the  glory 

^  Luigi  Pulci,  in  his  famous  romantic  poem  published  in  1481, 
has  a  couple  of  striking  stanzas  in  Avhich  Astarotte  sajs  to  Ri- 
naldo  that  the  time  is  at  hand  when  Hercules  shall  blush  to  see 
how  far  beyond  his  Pillars  the  ships  shall  soon  go  forth  to  find 
another  hemisphere,  for  although  the  earth  is  as  round  as  a  wheel, 
yet  the  water  at  any  given  point  is  a  plane,  and  inasmuch  as  all 
things  tend  to  a  common  centre  so  that  by  a  divine  mystery  the 
earth  is  suspended  in  equilibrium  among  the  .^tars,  just  so  there  is 
an  antipodal  world  with  cities  and  castles  unknown  to  men  of  olden 
time,  and  the  sun  in  hastening  westwards  descends  to  shine  upon 
those  peoples  who  are  awaiting  him  below  the  horizon  :  — 

Sappi  che  questa  opinioue  h  vana 
Perchfe  piu  oltre  navicar  si  puote, 
Per6  che  1'  acqua  in  ogni  parte  h  plana, 
Bench^  la  terra  abbi  forma  di  ruote  ; 
Era  pill  grossa  allor  la  gente  umana, 
Tal  che  potrebbe  arrosairne  le  gote 
Ercule  ancor,  d'  aver  posti  que'  segni, 
Perch^  piu  oltre  passeranno  i  legoi. 


'.M 


'l:i 


]^ 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


365 


and  riches  to  he  found  by  sailing  "  straight  to 
Cathay,"  and  there  were  many  channels  through 
which  Columbus  might  have  got  some  inkling  of 
his  views,  even  before  going  to  Portugal. 

However  this  may  have  been,  the  letter  clearly 
proves  that  at  that  most  interesting  period,  in  or 
about  1474,  Columbus  was  already  meditating 
upon  the  westward  route.^     Whether  he  owed  the 

E  puoBsi  andar  giii  nell'  altro  emisporio, 
Per6  che  al  centro  oriiI  cona  reprirae  ; 
81cch6  la  terra  per  divin  niisterio 
Soapesa  ata  fra  le  stelle  Bublliue, 
E  laggiu  son  cittd,  castella,  e  iinperio ; 
Ma  nol  cognobbon  quelle  gente  prime. 
Ved)  che  il  sol  di  camniiiiar  s'  affretta, 
Dove  io  dico  che  laggiii  s'  aspetta. 

Pulci,  Morgante  Maggiore,  xxv.  229,  230. 

This  prophecy  of  wnstem  discovery  combines  with  the  astro- 
nomical knowledge  here  shown,  to  remind  us  that  the  Florentine 
Pulci  was  a  fellow-townsman  and  most  likely  an  acquaintance  of 
Toscanelli. 

^  It  was  formerly  assumed,  without  hesitation,  that  the  letter 
from  Toscanelli  to  Columbus  was  written  and  sent  in  1474.  Tlie 
reader  will  observe,  however,  that  while  the  enclosed  letter  to 
Martinez  is  dated  June  25,  1474,  the  letter  to  Columbus,  in  which 
it  was  enclosed,  has  no  date.  But  according*  to  the  text  as  given 
in  Vita  delV  Ammiraylio,  cap.  viii.,  tliis  would  make  no  difference, 
for  the  letter  to  Columbus  was  sent  only  a  few  days  later  than 
the  original  letter  to  Martinez:  "I  send  you  a  copy  of  another 
letter,  which  I  wrote  a  few  days  ago  (ulquanti  giorni  fa)  to  a 
friend  of  mine,  a  gentleman  of  the  household  of  the  king  of 
Portugal  before  the  wars  of  Castile,  in  reply  to  another, "  etc.  This 
friend,  Martinez,  had  evidently  been  a  gentleman  of  the  house- 
hold of  Alfonso  V.  since  before  the  civil  wars  of  Castile,  which 
in  1474  had  been  going  on  intermittently  for  nine  years  under  the 
feeble  Henry  IV.,  who  did  not  die  until  December  12,  1474.  Tos- 
canelli apparently  means  to  say  "  a  friend  of  mine  who  has  for 
ten  years  or  more  been  a  gentleman  of  the  royal  household,"  etc. ; 
only  instead  of  mentioning  the  number  of  years,  he  alludes  less 
precisely  (as  most  people,  and  perhaps  especially  old  people,  are 
apt  to  do)  to  the  most  notable,  mentionable,  and  glaring  fact  in 


II 


866 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


•J 
t' 

f 
i   i 


The  idea  was 
■uggeBted  by 
the  globular 
form  of  the 
earth; 


idea  to  Toscanelli,  or  not,  is  a  question  of  no  great 
importance  so  far  as  concerns  his  own 
originality ;  for  the  idea  was  already  in 
the  air.  The  originality  of  Columbus 
did  not  consist  in   hiis   conceiving   the 

the  history  of  the  Peniiiiiula  for  that  decade,  —  namely,  the  civD 
wars  of  Castile.  As  if  an  American  writer  in  1864  had  said,  "  a 
friend  of  mine,  who  has  been  secretary  to  A.  B.  since  before  the 
war,"  inp'ead  of  saying  "  for  four  yea.-^  or  more."  This  is  the 
only  reasonable  intei^iretation  of  the  phrase  as  it  stands  above,  and 
it  was  long  ago  suggested  by  Humboldt  (Examen  critique,  torn.  j. 
p.  225).  Italian  and  Spanish  writers  of  that  day,  however,  were 
lavish  with  their  commas  and  sprinkled  them  in  pretty  much  at 
haphazard.  In  this  case  Ferdinand's  translator,  Ulloa,  sprinkled 
in  one  comma  too  many,  and  it  fell  just  in  front  of  the  clause 
"before  the  wars  of  Castile;  "  so  that  Toscanelli's  sentence  was 
made  to  read  as  follows:  "  I  send  you  a  copy  of  another  letter, 
which  I  wrote  a  few  days  ago  to  a  friend  of  mine,  a  gentleman  of 
the  household  of  the  king  of  Portugal,  before  the  wars  of  Cas- 
tile, in  reply  to  another,"  etc.  Now  this  unhappy  comma,  coming 
after  the  'vord  "  tortugal,"  has  caused  ream  after  ream  of  good 
paper  to  be  inkei  up  in  discussion,  for  it  has  led  some  critics  to 
understand  the  sentence  as  follows :  '"  I  send  you  a  copy  of  an- 
other letter,  which  I  wrote  a  few  days  ago,  before  the  wars  of 
Castile,  to  a  friend  of  mine,"  etc.  This  reading  brought  things 
to  a  pretty  pass.  Evidently  a  letter  dated  June  25,  1474,  could 
not  have  been  written  before  tho  civil  wars  of  Castile,  which  be- 
gan h,  1465.  It  was  therefore  assumed  that  the  phrase  must 
refev  to  the  "  War  of  Succession  "  between  Castile  and  Portugal 
(in  some  W3~3  an  outgrowth  from  the  civil  wars  of  Castile)  which 
began  in  M  y,  1475,  and  ended  in  September,  1479.  M.  d'Avezac 
thinks  that  the  letter  to  Columbus  must  have  been  written  after 
the  latter  date,  or  more  than  five  years  later  than  the  enclosed 
letter.  M.  Han-isse  is  somewhat  less  exacting,  and  is  willing  to 
admit  that  it  may  have  been  written  at  any  time  after  this  war 
had  fairly  begun,  —  say  in  the  summer  of  1475,  not  more  than  a 
year  or  so  later  than  the  enclosed  letter.  Still  he  is  disposed  on 
bome  accounts  to  put  the  date  as  late  as  1482.  The  phrase  al- 
quanti  giornifa  will  not  allow  either  of  these  interpretations.  It 
means  "  a  few  days  ago,"  and  cannot  possibly  mean  a  year  ago, 
still  less  five  years  ago.     The  Spanish  retraoslator  from  Ulloa 


I 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


367 


possibility  of  reaching  the  shores  of  Cathay  by  sail- 
ing west,  but  in  his  conceiving  it  in  such  distinct 

renders  it  exacdy  algunos  dias  hd  (Navairete,  Coleccion,  torn.  ii. 
p.  7),  and  Humboldt  {loc.  cit.)  has  it  il  y  a  quelques  jours.  If  we 
could  be  sure  that  the  expression  is  a  correct  rendering  of  the 
lost  Ijatin  original,  we  might  feel  sure  that  the  letter  to  Colum- 
bus must  have  been  written  as  early  as  the  beginning  of  Argust, 
1474.  But  now  the  great  work  of  Las  Casas,  after  lying  in  man- 
uscript for  314  years,  has  at  length  been  pubhshed  in  1875.  Las 
Casas  gives  a  Spanish  version  of  the  Toscanelli  letters  {Ilistoria 
de  las  Indias,  torn.  i.  pp.  92-97),  which  is  unquestionably  older 
than  UUoa's  Italian  version,  though  perhaps  not  necessarily  more 
accurate.  The  phrase  in  Las  Casas  is  not  algunos  dias  hd,  but 
hd  dias,  i.  e.  not  "  a  few  days  ago,"  but  "some  time  ago."  Just 
which  expression  Toscanelli  used  cannot  be  determined  unless 
somebody  is  fortunate  enough  to  discover  the  lost  Latin  original. 
The  phrase  in  Las  Casas  admits  much  more  latitude  of  meaning 
than  the  other.  I  should  suppose  that  hd  dias  might  refer  to  an 
event  a  year  or  two  old,  which  would  admit  of  the  interpretation 
considered  admissible  by  M.  Harrisse.  I  should  hardly  suppose 
that  it  could  refer  to  an  event  five  or  six  years  old ;  if  Toscanelli 
had  been  referring  in  1479  or  1480  to  a  letter  written  in  1474,  his 
phrase  would  probably  have  appeared  in  Spanish  as  algunos  ahos 
hd,  i.  e.  "a  few  years  ago,"  not  as  hd  dias.  M.  d'Avezac's  hy- 
pothesis seems  to  me  not  only  inconsistent  with  the  phrase  ha 
dias,  but  otherwise  improbable.  The  frightful  anarchy  in  Cas- 
tile, which  beg:in  in  14G5  with  the  attempt  to  depose  Henry  IV. 
and  alter  the  succession,  was  in  great  measure  a  series  of  rav- 
aging campaigii.3  and  raids,  now  more  general,  now  more  local,  and 
can  hardly  be  snid  to  have  come  to  an  end  before  Henry's  death 
in  1474.  The  war  which  beg'in  with  the  invasion  of  Castile  by 
Alfonso  V.  of  Portugal,  in  May,  1475,  was  simply  a  later  phase  of 
the  same  series  of  conflicts,  growing  out  of  disputed  claims  to  the 
crown  and  rivalries  among  great  barons,  in  many  respects  similar 
to  the  contemporary  anarchy  in  England  called  the  Wars  of  the 
Roses.  It  is  not  likely  that  Toscanelli,  writing  at  any  time  be- 
tween 147.")  and  1480,  and  speaking  of  the  "  wars  of  Castile  "  in 
the  plural,  could  have  had  1474  in  his  mind  as  a  date  previous  to 
those  wars ;  to  his  mind  it  would  have  rightly  appeared  as  a  date 
in  the  midst  of  them.  In  any  case,  therefore,  his  reference  must 
be  to  a  time  before  14{]5,  and  Humboldt's  interpretation  is  in  all 


1   • 


868 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


and  practical  shape  as  to  be  ready  to  make  the 
adventure  in  his  own  person.  As  a  matter  of  theory 
the  possibility  of  such  a  voyage  could  not  fail  to 
be  suggested  by  the  globular  form  of  the  earth ; 
and  ever  sin^e  the  days  of  Aiistotle  that  had  been 
generally  admitted  by  men  learned  in  physical 
science.  Aristotle  proved,  from  the  different  alti- 
tudes of  the  pole-star  in  different  places,  that  the 
earth  must  necessarily  be  a  globe.  Moreover, 
says  Aristotle,  "  some  stars  are  seen  in  Egypt  or 
at  Cyprus,  but  are  not  seen  in  the  countries  to  the 
north  of  these ;  and  the  stars  that  in  the  north 
are  visible  while  they  make  a  complete  circuit, 
there  undergo  a  setting.  So  that  from  this  it  is 
manifest,  not  only  that  the  form  of  the  earth  is 
round,  but  also  that  it  is  part  of  not  a  very  large 
sphere  ;  for  otherwise  the  difference  would  not  be 
so  obvious  to  persons  making  so  small  a  change  of 
place.  Wherefore  we  may  judge  that  those  per- 
sons v^ho  connect  the  rcqion  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  Pillars  of  Hercules  with  that  towards 
India.,  and  who  assert  that  in  this  way  the  sea  is 
ON "  do  not  assert  things  very  improbable."  ^     It 


probability  correct.  The  letter  from  Toscanelli  to  Columbus 
was  probably  written  within  a  year  or  two  after  June  25,  1474, 

On  account  of  the  vast  importance  of  the  Toscanelli  letters, 
and  because  the  early  texts  are  found  in  books  which  the  reader 
is  not  likely  to  have  at  hand,  I  have  given  them  entire  in  the 
Appendix  at  the  end  of  this  work. 

^  "flfTTe  ri  vtrlp  Tr\s  Ke<pa\7}S  &(Trpa  fucydXriv  ^x*"*  '''^*'  /u«Ta;8o» 
AVi  Kol  fi^  toCto  tpaiveadai  irphs  &pKTOv  re  koI  iJL(arifji0piav  ;U6to- 
Balvovaiv  '  ^vioi  yiip  iv  Aiyvitrcj)  /xiv  aarepes  dpuvrai,  Ka\  nepl 
Kvirpov  iv  rois  vphs  &pKrov  Se  x^P^'^^'^'  '^"X  <5^«»'Toi  Kol  rh  Sih  iraV' 
rhs  iv  rois  irphs  ipKrhv  (paiuS/xeva  twu  iarpuv,  if  iKfivois  Tols  rSiroii 
woiilrai  iiXTiv.  "Ciar^  ov  n6vov  iK  tovtwv  S^Aov  irepupepit  t)v  rh  ffxvt** 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


B69 


thus  appeals  that  more  than  eighteen  centuries 
before  Columbus  took  counsel  of  Tosca-      .  ,. 

and  was  as  old 

neUi,  "  those  persons  "  to  whom  Aristotle  **  ^riatotie. 
alludes  were  discussing,  as  a  matter  of  theory,  this 
same  subject.  Eratosthenes  held  that  it  would 
be  easy  enough  to  sail  from  Spain  to  India  on 
the  same  parallel  were  it  not  for  the  vast  extent  of 
the  Atlantic  ocean.^  On  the  other  hand,  Seneca 
maintained  that  the  distance  was  probably  not  so 
very  great,  and  that  with  favouring  winds  a  ship 
might  make  the  voyage  in  a  few  days.'^  In  one 
of  his  tragedies  Seneca  has  a  striking  passage  ^ 
which  has  been  repeatedly  quoted  as  referring  to 
the  discovery  of  America,  and  is  certainly  one  of 

rrjv  yrjs,  &\A&  Koi  (r<palpas  ov  fj,fyd\ris.  Od  70^  &»»  oiircD  raxi>  ^tJ- 
Sr)\ov  eirolfi  fifBiarfufvois  olirw  fipaxv.  Aih  rovs  inro\aiJ.&dvovTas 
(TvvdvTfiv  Thv  TTfpi  rks  'Hpa/cAefous  ctt'^Aos  tSitop  rcj)  irepl  r^v  ^luSiKiiv, 
Kal  TOvTOv  rhv  Tp6nov  «?vai  tV  Qd\aTTav  fitav,  fxi]  \lay  vwoAafifid' 
vfiv  &iti(TTa  5o/ceIi'.  Aristotle,  De  Codo,  ii.  14.  He  goes  on  to  say 
that  ' '  those  persons ' '  allege  the  existence  of  elephants  alike  in 
Mauretania  and  in  India  in  proof  of  their  theory. 

^  "Ho-t'  fl  fih  rh  fityeOos  tov  'AtAoj'tikoC  ireXdyovs  iK^Kvf,  Kiv 
irXfTv  vficis  fK  rrjs  'IjSr/p/oy  (is  Ti]p  'IvSik^v  Sid  tov  avrov  iropaAAij. 
Aow.     Strabo,  i.  4,  §  6. 

-  "  Quantum  enim  est,  quod  ab  ultimis  litoribus  Hispanise  usque 
ad  Indos  jacet  ?     Paucissimorum  dierum  spatium,  si  navem  suua 
Tentus  implevit."     Seneca.  Nat.  Qucest.,  i.  prsef.  §  11. 
*  Venient  annis  saecula  seris, 
Qiiibus  OceanuB  vincula  renim 
Laxet,  et  inpens  pateat  tellus, 
Tethysque  novos  detegat  orbea, 
Nee  sit  terris  ultima  Tliule. 

Seneca,  Medea,  376. 

In  the  copy  of  Seneca's  tragedies,  published  at  Venice  in  1.510, 
bought  at  Valladolid  by  Ferdinand  Columbus  in  March,  lolH,  for 
4  reals  (plus  2  reals  for  binding),  and  now  to  be  seen  at  the  Biblio- 
teca  Colombina,  there  is  a  marginal  note  attached  to  these  verses  : 
"  hajc  prophetia  expleta  e  per  patre  meuj  cristoforii  colo  almiratS 
anno  1492^' 


'370 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Opinions  of 
ancient 
W' iters. 


the  most  notable  instances  of  prophecy  on  recorcL 
There  will  come  a  time,  he  says,  in  the  later  years, 
when  Ocean  shall  loosen  the  bonds  by  which  wo 
have  been  confined,  when  an  immense  land  shall 
lie  revealed,  and  Tethys  shall  disclose 
new  worlds,  and  Thule  will  no  longer 
be  the  most  remote  of  countries.  In 
Strabo  there  is  a  passage,  less  commonly  noticed, 
which  hits  the  truth  —  as  we  know  it  to-day  — 
even  more  closely.  Having  argued  that  the  total 
length  of  the  Inhabited  World  is  only  about  a 
third  part  of  the  circumference  of  the  earth  in  the 
temperate  zone,  he  suggests  it  as  possible,  or  even 
probable,  that  within  this  space  there  may  be  an- 
other Inhabited  World,  or  even  more  than  one ; 
but  such  places  would  be  inhabited  by  different 
races  of  men,  with  whom  the  geographer,  whose 
task  it  is  to  describe  the  known  world,  has  no  con- 
cern.i  Nothing  could  better  illustrate  the  philo- 
sophical character  of  Strabo's  mind.  In  such 
Bpeculations,  so  far  as  Iiis  means  of  verification 
went,  he  was  situated  somewhat  as  we  are  to-day 
with  regard  to  the  probable  inhabitants  of  Venus 
or  Mars. 

Early  in  the  Christian  era  we  are  told  by  an 


^  KaKovfiev  yh.p  o\Kovfx4vr)v  ^v  oiKov/xev  Kol  yvupl^ojuev  •  ivdf Herat 
5^  Kol  iv  ry  airy  fi/KodTefi  ^divTi  Kal  Svo  otKovfifvas  elvui,  fj  Kol  irAet- 
ovs.  Strabo,  i.  4,  §  6 ;  Kal  yap  ei  oO'tois  ex^'-.  ovx  "^^^  rovruiv  ye 
o'lKfiTai  tS)V  Trap'  rifuv '  iA\'  iKeivqv  &W-qv  oiKov/j.evrji'  Oereov . 
Zirep  i (rrl  ir  idav6v.  'HfiTv  Sh  to  tV  aiirfi  ravra \fKr4ov.  Id.  ii. 
5,  §  l.'i.  Tliis  has  always  seemed  to  me  one  of  tlie  most  remarkable 
anticipations  of  modern  truth  in  all  ancient  literature.  Mr.  Bun- 
bury  thinks  it  may  have  sugg^ested  the  famous  verses  of  JSenecf 
^uat  quoted.     History  of  Ancient  Geography,  vol.  ii.  p.  224. 


\Ut\  t\  '^'tAicimMmlK  t  ir 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


371 


eminent  Greek  astronomer  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
earth's  sphericity  was  accepted  by  all  competent 
persons  except  the  Epicureans.^  Among  the  Fa- 
thers of  the  Church  there  was  some  difference  of 
opinion ;  while  in  general  they  denied  the  existence 
of  human  beings  beyond  the  limits  of 
their  CEcumene,  or  Inhabited  World,  chdstuin*' 
this  denial  did  not  necessarily  involve 
disbelief  in  the  globular  figure  of  the  earth.^  The 
views  of  the  great  mass  of  people,  and  of  the  more 
ignorant  of  the  clergy,  down  to  the  time  of  Colum- 
bus, were  probably  well  represented  in  the  book  of 
Cosmas  Indicopleustes  already  cited.^  Neverthe- 
less among  the  more  enlightened  clergy  the  views 
of  the  ancient  astronomers  were  never  quite  for- 
gotten, and  in  the  great  revival  of  intellectual  life 
in  the  thirteenth  century  the  doctrine  of  the  earth's 
sphericity  was  again  brought  prominently  into  the 
foreground.  We  find  Dante  basing  upon  it  the 
cosmical  theory  elaborated  in  his  immortal  poem.* 
In  1267  Roger  Bacon  —  stimulated,  no 
doubt,  by  the  reports  of  the  ocean  east 
of  Cathay  — collected  passages  from  ancient  writers 


Roger  Bacon. 


«    I 


*  Ot  Si  Tjfi^Tepoi  [i.  e.  the  Stoics]  not  in-b  fxaOri/xiTuv  irdvrei,  Ka) 
ot  ir\eiovs  ru>v  ctirb  rov  'S.wKpariKov  SiSaaKa\fiov  acpaipiKhv  tlvai  rh 
exvfjia  rrjs  yrjs  b^f0i$ai(»)(Tavro.  Cleomedea,  i.  8  ;  cf.  Lucretius^ 
De  Rerum  Nat.,  i.  1U5'^-1082 ;  Stobseus,  EvlogA.  19;  Plutarch, 
De  facie  in  Orbe  Luna,  cap.  vii. 

^  See  Augustine,  De  civitate  Dei,  xvi.  9  ;  Lactantius,  Inst.  Div.^ 
iii.  23  ;  Jerome,  Comm.  in  Ezechiel,  L  6;  Whewell's  History  of  tfv 
Inductive  Sciences,  vol  i.  p.  lUO. 

^  See  above,  p.  2()0. 

*  For  an  account  of  the  cosmography  of  the  Divine  Comedy- 
illustrated  with  interesting  diagrams,  see  Artaud  de  Montoiw 
Histoire  de  Dante  Alighieri,  Paris,  1841. 


/ 


372 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


to  prove  that  the  distance  from  Spain  to  the  eastern 
shores  of  Asia  could  not  be  very  great.  Bacon's 
argument  and  citations  were  copied  in  an  extremely 
curious  book,  the  "  Imago  Mundi,"  published  in 
1410  by  the  Cardinal  Pierre  d'Ailly,  Bishop  oi 
Cambrai,  better  known  by  the  Latinized  form  of 
his  name  as  Petrus  AUiacus.  This  treatise,  which 
The "  Imago  throughout  the  fifteenth  century  enjoyed 
Fotrul  "^  a  great  reputation,  was  a  favourite 
AUiacus.  book  with  Columbus,  and   his  copy  of 

it,  covered  with  marginal  annotations  in  his  own 
handwriting,  is  still  preserved  among  the  priceless 
treasures  of  the  Biblioteca  Colombina.^  He  found 
in  it  strong  confirmation  of  his  views,  and  it  is  not 
impossible  that  the  reading  of  it  may  have  first  put 
such  ideas  into  his  head.  Such  a  point,  however, 
can  hardly  be  determined.  As  I  have  already  ob- 
served, these  ideas  were  in  the  air.  What  Colum- 
bus did  was  not  to  originate  them,  but  to  incarnate 
them  in  facts  and  breathe  into  them  the  breath  of 
life.     It  was  one  thing  to  suggest,  as  a  theoretical 

^  It  was  first  printed  without  indication  of  place  or  date,  but 
probably  the  place  was  Paris  and  the  date  somewhere  from  1483 
to  1490.  Manuscript  copies  were  very  common,  and  Columbus 
probably  knew  the  book  long  before  that  time.  There  is  a  good 
account  of  it  in  Humboldt's  Examen  critique,  torn.  i.  pp.  61-76, 
96-108.  Humboldt  thinks  that  such  knowledge  as  Columbus  had 
of  the  opinions  of  ancient  writers  was  chiefly  if  not  wholly  ob- 
tained  from  Alliacus.  It  is  doubtful  if  Columbus  had  any  direct 
acquaintance  with  the  works  of  Roger  Bacon,  but  he  knew  the 
Liber  Cosmographicus  of  Albertus  Magnus  and  the  Speculum  Na- 
turale  of  Vincent  de  Beauvais  (both  about  12r)0),  and  drew  en- 
couragement from  them.  He  also  knew  the  book  of  Mandeville, 
fii'st  printed  in  French  at  Lyons  in  1480,  and  a  Latin  translation 
of  Marco  Polo,  published  in  14S5,  a  copy  of  which,  with  maig-inal 
MS.  notes,  is  now  in  the  Colombina. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


373 


efti'' 


.>YHtiti  Cnfani  Hr^'ritm  m 
ri9|b(U0  ntuiqi  rarracan.ba 
nnbran«9  ^nooa  <  Wra 
I  mrtic  f ruge0  tiice  b>>fitii9 
^bomuiCB .  drpbancee  in 

!^  pirmofbd  ptonmot)  Ibi 

adbonwvgnirts  ac  immefo 

tnpta  oalogmapa  g-^^a? 

,»la  f?!  coraa  pars  baoicabt 

ipff  brcat  iSuropaj  clTc  ma 

Dicoisif  cp  frone  "Jnoic 

» propter  re^onem  fiatba 

iij  maris  magnu  oeTcenoea 

;8m  infcriorem  feu  Ti^rica^ 

i»9  "jhoic  oeTccnoit  a  tropi 

uomonrem  Af)alcB.  a  regi 

ifnunc  /Ir^mtncflcur  Ra 

v.'fl0)>enc-\)naru(?roini 

looequflnuncdtfoTno  \ 

'iri  in  meoiobabitarionid' 

jcacetc  rcptetrione  n  meri 

'nionisponetifl  t^itrufale 

■  ^  raluttm  in  mcpto  cerre'" 

I  e  babitabilTobcortenour 

i^inf  ficur  rupraoicoim  cfl 

.>iiIib«>lnoie/   Caxx)!- 

noia  In  q^acacc  Qeorr 

ttirabiliu  vancfatc  FOa 

jStgmn  ouoa  cubtcont^ 

partut  ocrauo  fmrtcunc  • 

uimen  ferpcnnim  out  ibi 

jflrobu.ni.cubtto?2  logi 

'IflflcpctungueepFminc 


«• 


Annotations  by  Columbus. 


,t!  '^' 


374 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


m 


possibility,  that  Cathay  might  be  reached  by  sailing 
westward  ;  and  it  was  quite  another  thing  to  prove 
that  the  enterprise  was  feasible  with  the  ships  and 
instruments  then  at  command. 

The  principal  con^^'deration,  of  course,  was  the 
distance  to  be  traversed  ;  and  here  Columbus  was 
helped  by  an  error  which  he  shared  with  many 
geographers  of  hii  day.  He  somewhat  underesti" 
mated  the  size  uf  the  earth,  and  at  the  same  time 
greatly  overestimated  the  length  of  Asia.  The 
first  astronomer  to  calculate,  by  scientific  methods, 
the  circumference  of  our  planet  at  the  equator 
was  Eratosthenes  (b.  c.  276-196),  and 
he  came  —  all  things  considered — fairly 
near  the  truth  ;  he  made  it  25,200  geo- 
graphical miles  (of  ten  stadia),  or  about 
one  seventh  too  great.  The  true  figure  is  21,600 
geographical  miles,  equivalent  to  24,899  English 
statute  miles.^  Curiously  enough,  Posidonius,  in 
revising  this  calculation  a  century  later,  reduced 
the  figure  to  18,000  miles,  or  about  one  seventh 
too  small.  The  circumference  in  the  latitude 
of  Gibraltar  he  estimated  at  14,000  miles ;  the 
length  of  the  (Ecumene,  or  Inhabited  World,  he 
called  7,000  ;  the  distance  across  the  Atlantic  from 
the  Spanish  strand  to  the  eastern  shores  of  Asia 
was  the  other  7,000.  The  error  of  Posidonius  was 
partially  rectified  by  Ptolemy,  who  made  the  equa- 
torial circumference  20,400  geographical  miles,  and 


Ancient  esti- 
iiiiiti'8  of  the 
B!ze  of  the 
globe  and  the 
length  of  the 
Qj)cuniuue. 


^  See  Ilerschel's  Outlines  of  Astronomy,  p.  140.  For  an  account 
of  the  method  employed  by  Eratosthenes,  see  Delambre,  Ilistoirs 
de  I'astronomie  ancienne,  torn.  i.  pp.  86-1)1;  ILev/ia,  Astronomy  of 
the  Ancients,  p.  198. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


375 


the  length  of  a  degree  56.6  miles.^  This  estimate, 
in  which  the  error  was  less  than  one  sixteenth,  pre- 
vailed until  modern  times.  Ptolemy  also  supposed 
the  Inhabited  World  to  extend  over  about  half  the 
circumference  of  the  temperate  zone,  but  the  other 
half  he  imagined  as  consisting  largely  of  bad  lauds, 
quagmires,  and  land-locked  seas,  instead  of  a  vast 
and  open  ocean.^ 

Ptolemy's  opinion  as  to  the  length  of  the  In- 
habited World  was  considerably  modified  in  the 
minds  of  those  writers  who  toward  the  end  of  the 
Middle  Ages  had  been  strongly  impressed  by  the 
book  "of  Marco  Polo.  Among  these  persons  was 
Toscanelli.  This  excellent  astronomer  jogcaneiH' 
calculated  the  earth's  equatorial  cir-  tife"fze*of"the 
cumference  at  almost  exactly  the  true  ®"''"'' 
figure;  his  error  was  less  than  124  English  miles 
in  excess.  The  circumference  in  the  latitude  of 
Lisbon  he  made  26  x  250  x  3  =  19,500  miles.^  Two 
thirds  of   this  figure,  or  13,000  miles,  he  allowed 

^  See  Bunbury's  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  vol.  ii.  pp.  95- 
07,  54B-579 ;  Miiller  and  Donaldson,  History  of  Greek  Literature, 
vol.  iii.  p.  268. 

2  Strabo,  in  arguing  against  this  theory  of  bad  lands,  etc.,  as 
obstacles  to  ocean  navigation  —  a  theory  which  seems  to  be  at 
least  as  old  as  Hipparchus  —  has  a  passage  which  finely  expresses 
the  loneliness  of  the  sea: — O'lrt  yhp  irfpi7r\fTv  iinxeip'f)(TavT(s, 
flra  auacrrpfipavres,  ovx  virh  ijntlpov  rivhs  avr iiriirT ovarjs  Kol 
KuKvoiaijs,  rhv  ivtKfiva  •kKovv  avaKpovrdrivai  <paa\v,  aWh  virh 
aifoplas  Koi  iprqfjiias,  ouSev  ■f)TTOv  t^s  ©oAtirTr/s  e'x'oi^fTTjy  rhv  iripov 
(lib.  i.  cap.  i.  §  8).  When  one  thinks  of  this  airopia  and  iprifiia, 
one  fancies  oneself  far  out  on  the  Atlantic,  alone  in  an  open  boat 
on  a  cloudy  night,  bewildered  and  hopeless. 

^  See  above,  p.  360.  Toscanelli's  mile  was  nearly  equivalent 
to  the  English  statute  mile.  See  the  very  important  note  in  Win- 
»or,  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist.,  vol.  i.  p.  61. 


,i  rJi!: 


376 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


for  the  length  of  the  CEcumene,  from  Lisbon  east, 
ward  to  Quinsay  (i.  e.  Hang-chow),  leaving  6,500 
for  the  westward  voyage  from  Lisbon  to  Quinsay. 
Thus  Toscanelli  elongated  Asia  by  nearly  the  whole 
width  of  the  Pacific  ocean.  His  Quinsay  would 
come  about  130°  W.,  a  few  hundred  miles  west 
of  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  river.  Zaiton  (i.  e. 
Chang-chow),  the  easternmost  city  in  Toscanelli's 
China,  would  come  not  far  from  the  tip  end  of 
Lower  California.  Thus  the  eastern  coast  of  Ci- 
pango,  about  a  thousand  miles  east  from  Zaiton, 
would  fall  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  somewhere  near 
the  ninety-third  meridian,  and  that  island, 'being 
over  a  thousand  miles  in  length  north  and  south, 
would  fill  up  the  space  between  the 
position  of  parallel  of  New  Orleans  and  that  of  the 
ipango.  ^.^y  ^£  Q^^jr^^gjjjg^ig^^  'j'j^g  westward  voy- 
age from  the  Canaries  to  Cipango,  according  to 
Toscanelli,  would  be  rather  more  than  3,250 
miles,  but  at  a  third  of  the  distance  out  he  placed 
the  imaginary  island  of  'Antilia,"  with  which 
he  seems  to  have  supposed  Portuguese  sailors 
to  be  familiar.^  "  So  through  the  unknown  parts 
of  the  route,"  said  the  venerable  astronomer,  "  the 
stretches  of  sea  to  be  traversed  are  not   great," 


^  The  reader  will  also  notice  upon  Toscaiielli's  map  the  islands 
of  Brazil  and  St.  Brandan.  For  an  account  of  all  these  fabulous 
islands  see  Winsor,  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist.,  vol.  i.  pp.  46-51.  The 
name  of  "  Antilia"  survives  in  the  name  "  Antilles,"  applied  since 
about  1502  to  the  West  India  islajids.  All  the  islands  west  of 
Toscanelli's  ninetieth  meridian  belong  in  the  Pacific.  He  drew 
them  from  his  understanding  of  the  descriptions  of  Marco  Polo, 
Friar  Odoric,  and  other  travellers.  These  were  the  islands  sup- 
posed, rightly,  though  vaguely,  to  abound  in  spices. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


87T 


—  not  much  more  than  2,000  English  miles,  not 
BO  long  as  the  voyage  from  Lisbon  to  the  Guinea 
coast. 

While  Columbus  attached  great  importance  to 
these  calculations  and  carried  Toscauelli's  map 
with  him  upon  his  first  voyage,  he  improved  some- 
what upon  the  estimates  of  distance,  and  thus  made 
his  case  still  more  hopeful.  Columbus  was  not 
enough  of  an  astronomer  to  adopt  Tos- 

,,.,       .  1  ,        c    ,1         Columbus's 

canelli  s  miproved  measurement  ot  the  opinion  of  the 

size  of  the  earth.    He  accepted  Ptolemy's  giobe,  the 

figure  of  20,400  geographical  miles  for  (Ecumene, 

the  equatorial  girth,^  which  woidd  make  of  tiie  Atian- 
the   circumference   in    the    latitude   of 

^  Columbus  was  confirmed  in  tliis  opinion  by  the  book  of  the 
Arabian  astronomer  Alfragan,  written  about  A.  D.  950,  a  Latin 
translation  of  which  appeared  in  1447.  There  is  a  concise  sum- 
mary of  it  in  Delambre,  Uistoire  de  V astronomie  du  Moyen  Age, 
pp.  G.3-73.  Columbus  proceeded  throughout  on  the  assumption 
that  the  length  of  a  degree  at  the  equator  is  .">().()  geographical 
miles,  instead  of  the  correct  figure  60.  This  would  oblige  him  to 
reduce  all  Toscauelli's  figures  by  about  six  per  cent.,  to  begin  with. 
Upon  this  point  we  have  the  highest  authority,  that  of  Columbua 
himself,  in  an  autograph  marginal  note  in  his  copy  of  the  Imago 
Mundi,  where  he  expresses  himself  most  explicitly :  "  Nota  quod 
sepius  navigando  ex  Ulixbona  ad  Austrum  in  Guineam,  notavi  cum 
diligentia  viam,  ut  solitum  naucleris  et  malineriis,  et  preteria  ac- 
cepi  altitudinem  solis  ciim  quadrante  et  aliis  instrumentis  plures 
vices,  et  inveni  concordare  cum  Alfragano,  videlicet  respondere 
qnemlibet  gradum  milliariis  .')(3§.  Quare  ad  banc  mensuram 
fidem  adhibendam.  Tunc  igitur  possumus  dicere  quod  circuitus 
Terrse  sub  arse  equinoctiali  est  20,400  milliariorum.  Similiter 
que  id  invenit  magister  Joseph  us  phisicus  et  astrologus  et  alii 
plures  missi  specialiter  ad  hoc  per  serenissimum  regem  Portu- 
galire,"  etc. ;  anglice,  "  Observe  that  in  sailing  often  from  Lisbon 
soutbwHrd  to  Guinea,  I  carefully  marked  the  course,  according  to 
the  custom  of  skippers  and  mariners,  and  moreover  I  took  the 
stm's  altitude  several  times  with  a  quadrant  and  other  instru* 


'I    I 


i  ^mk 


378 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


the  Canaries  about  18,000  ;  and  Columbus,  on  the 
strength  of  sundry  passages  from  ancient  authors 
which  he  found  in  Alliacus  (cribbed  from  Roger 
Bacon),  conchided  that  six  sevenths  of  this  cir- 
cumference must  be  occupied  by  the  CEcumene, 
including  Cipango,  so  that  in  order  to  reach  that 
wonderful  island  he  would  only  have  to  sail  over 
one  seventh,  or  not  much  more  than  2,500  mdes 
from  the  Canaries.^     An  authority  upon  which  he 

ments,  and  in  agreement  with  Alfragan  I  found  that  each  degree 
[i.  8.  of  longitude,  measured  on  a  great  circle]  anrfwera  to  i")()| 
miles.  So  that  one  may  rely  upon  this  measure.  Wo  may  there- 
fore say  that  the  equatorial  circumference  of  the  earth  is  20,400 
miles.  A  similar  result  was  obtained  by  Master  Joseph,  the  phy- 
sicist [or,  perhaps,  physician]  and  astronomer,  and  several  others 
sent  for  this  special  purpose  by  the  most  gracious  king  of  Portu- 
gal." —  Master  Joseph  was  physicisin  to  John  II.  of  Portugal,  and 
was  associated  with  Martin  Behaira  in  the  invention  of  an  im- 
proved astrolabe  which  greatly  facilitated  ocean  navigation.  — 
The  exact  agreement  with  Ptolemy's  figures  shows  that  by  a  mile 
Columbus  meant  a  geographical  mile,  equivalent  to  ten  Greek 
stadia. 

^  One  seventh  of  18,000  is  2,571  geographical  miles,  equivalent 
to  2,063  English  miles.  The  actual  length  of  Columbus's  first 
voyage,  from  last  sight  of  land  in  the  Canaries  to  first  sight  of  land 
in  the  Bahamas,  was  according  to  his  own  dead  reckoning  about 
3,280  geographical  miles.  See  his  journal  in  Navarrete,  Coleccion, 
torn.  i.  pp.  G-20. 

I  give  here  in  parallel  columns  ths  passage  from  Bacon  and  the 
one  from  Alliacus  upon  which  Columbus  placed  so  much  reliance. 
In  the  Middle  Ages  there  was  a  generous  tolerance  of  much  thau 
we  have  since  learned  to  stigmatize  as  plagiarism. 


From  Roger  Bacon,  Opus 
Majus  (a.  d.  1267),  London, 
1733,  ed.  Jebb,  p.  183 :  —  "Sed 
Aristoteles  vult  in  fine  secundi 
Coeli  et  Mundi  quod  plus  [terrse] 
habitetur  quam  quarta  pars.  Et 
Averroes  hoc  confirmat.    Dicit 


From  Petrus  Alliacus,  De 
imagine  Mundi  (a.  d.  1410), 
Paris,  cir.  1490,  cap.  viii.  foL 
13  b :  —  "  Summus  Aristoteles 
dicit  quod  mare  parvum  est  in- 
ter finem  Hispaniae  a  parte  occi- 
dentis  et  in.er  principium  India 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


379 


placed  great  reliance  in  this  connection  was  the 
fourth  book  of  P^sdras,  which  although    ^j^^  ^^^^^ 
not  a  canonical  j)art  of  the  Bible  was   ^'^^J' 
a2)proved  by  holy  men,  and  which  ex- 


a  parte  orientis,  et  vult  quod 
plus  habittitur  quam  quarta 
pars,  et  Averroes  hoc  con- 
fimiat.  Insuper  Seneca  libro 
quinto  Naturaliuni,  dicit  quud 
mare  eat  navigabile  in  paucis 
diebus  si  ventus  sit  conveniens. 
Et  Plinius  docet  in  Naturalibus, 
libro  secundo,  quod  navigatum 
est  a  sinu  Arabico  usque  ad 
Gades  Uerculis  non  multum 
magno  tempore, 


Aristoteles  quod  mare  parvum 
est  inter  fineiu  Hispania)  a  parte 
occidentis  et  inter  principium 
Indiiu  a  parte  orientis.  Et  Sen- 
eca, libro  quinto  Naturalium, 
dicit  quod  mare  hoc  est  navi- 
gabile in  paucissimis  diebus  si 
ventus  sit  conveniens.  Et  Pli- 
nius docet  in  Naturalibus  quod 
navigatum  est  a  sinu  Arabico 
usque  ad  (Jades:  unde  refert 
quendam  fugisse  a  rege  suo 
prae  timore  et  intravit  sinum 
Maris  Rubri  .  .  .  qui  circiter 
spatium  navigationis  annualis 
distat  a  Mari  Indico:  ...  ex 
quo  patet  principium  India)  in 
oriente  multum  a  nobis  distare 
et  ab  Hispania,  postquam  tan- 
tum  distat  a  principio  Arabiaa 
versus  Indiam.  A  fine  Hispanias 
sub  terra  tam  parvum  mare  est 
quod  non  potest  cooperire  tres 
quartas  terrae.  Et  hoc  per 
auctoritatem  alterius  conside- 
i>ationis  probatur.  Nam  Esdras 
dicit  quarto  libro,  quod  sex 
partes  terras  sunt  habitatae  et 
septima  est  cooperta  aquis.  Et 
ne  aliquis  impediat  banc  aucto- 
ritatem, dicens  quod  liber  ille 
est  apocryphus  et  ignotae  auc- 
toritatis,  dicendum  est  quod 
eancti  habuerunt  ilium  librum 
in  usu  et  confirmant  veritates 
Bacras  per  ilium  librum." 

Columbus  must  either  have  carried  the  book  of  Alliacus  with 


unde  conoln- 
dunt  aliqui,  quod  mare  non  est 
tantura  quod  possit  cooperire 
tres  quartas  terrae.  Accedit  ad 
hoc  auctoritas  Esdrse  libro  suo 
quarto,  dicentis  quod  sex  partes 

terrae  sunt  habitatie  et  septima 
est  cooperta  aquis, 


cujus  libri  auctoritatem  sancti 
habuerunt  in  reverentia." 


%    I 


880 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


pressly  asserted  that  six  parts  of  the  earth  (i.  e.  of 
the  length  of  the  CEciimene,  or  north  temperate 
zone)  are  inhabited  and  only  the  seventh  part 
covered  with  water.  From  the  general  habit  of 
Columbus's  mind  it  may  be  inferred  that  it  was 
chiefly  upon  this  scriptural  authority  that  he  based 
his  confident  expectation  of  finding  land  soon  after 
accomplishing  seven  hundred  leagues  from  the 
Canaries.  Was  it  not  as  good  as  written  in  the 
Bible  that  land  was  to  be  found  there  ? 

Thus  did  Columbus  arrive  at  his  decisive  con- 
clusion, estimating  the  distance  across  the  Sea  of 
Darkness  to  Japan  at  something  less  than  the 
figure  which  actually  expresses  the  distance  to  the 
West  Indies.  Many  a  hopeful  enterprise  has  been 
ruined  by  errors  in  figuring,  but  this  wrong  cal- 


him  on  hia  voyages,  or  else  have  read  his  favourite  passages  until 
he  knew  them  by  heart,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  following  pas- 
sage of  a  letter,  written  from  Hispaniola  in  1498  to  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella  (Navarrete,  torn  i.  p.  201)  :  —  "El  Aristotel  dice  que 
este  mundo  es  pequeflo  y  es  el  agua  muy  poca,  y  que  facilmente 
se  puede  pasar  de  Espaiia  h  las  Indies,  y  esto  confirma  el  Avenryz 
[Averroes],  y  le  alega  el  cardenal  Pedro  de  Aliaco,  autorizando 
este  decir  y  aquel  de  Seneca,  el  qual  conforma  con  estos.  ...  A 
esto  trae  una  autoridad  de  Esdras  del  tercero  libro  suyo,  adondo 
dice  que  de  siete  partes  del  mundo  las  seis  son  descubiertas  y  la 
una  es  cubierta  de  agua,  la  cual  autoridad  es  aprobada  per  San- 
tos, los  cuales  dan  autoridad  al  3°  6  4°  libro  de  Esdras,  ansl  come 
es  S.  Agustin  6  S.  Ambrosio  en  su  exdmeron,^^  etc.  —  "Singular 
period,"  exclaims  Humboldt,  "when  a  mixture  of  testimonies 
from  Aristotle  and  Averroes,  Esdras  and  Seneca,  on  the  small 
extent  of  the  ocean  compared  with  the  magnitude  of  continental 
land,  afforded  to  monarchs  guarantees  for  the  safety  and  expe- 
diency of  costly  enterprises!  "  Cosmos,  tr.  Sabine,  vol.  ii.  p.  25Q 
The  passages  cited  in  this  note  may  be  found  in  Humboldt,  ExU' 
wien  critique,  toni.  i.  pp.  65-09.  Another  interesting  passage  from 
Imago  Mundi,  cap.  xv.,  is  quoted  on  p.  78  of  the  same  work. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


381 


eulation  was  certainly  a  great  help  to  Columbus. 
When  we  consider  how  difficult  he  found  portunate 
it  to  obtain  men  and  ships  for  a  voyage  ^y^t^J'^d' 
supposed  to  be  not  more  than  2,500  *""'■• 
miles  in  this  nev/  and.  untried  direction,  we  must 
admit  that  his  chances  woulf^  have  been  poor  in- 
deed if  he  had  proposed  to  sail  westward  on  the 
Sea  of  Darkness  for  nearly  12,000  miles,  the  real 
distance  from  the  Canaries  to  Japan.  It  was  a 
case  where  the  littleness  of  the  knowledge  was  not 
a  dangerous  but  a  helpful  thing.  If  instead  of  the 
somewhat  faulty  astronomy  of  Ptolemy  and  the 
very  hazy  notions  prevalent  about  "the  Indies," 
the  correct  astronomy  of  Toscanelli  had  prevailed 
and  had  been  joined  to  an  accurate  knowledge  of 
eastern  Asia,  Columbus  would  surely  never  have 
conceived  his  great  scheme,  and  the  discovery  of 
America  would  probably  have  waited  to  be  made 
by  accident.^     The  whole  point  of  his 

\  .        .  '  e  ^        ^         The  whole 

scheme  lay  in  its  promise  ot  a  shorter  point  and 

■1TT1  1  i'i        1         purport  of 

route  to  the  Indies  than  that  which  the  coiumbus's 
Portuguese   were    seeking    by   way   of 
Guinea.      Unless   it  was   probable   that  it  could 
furnish  such  a  shorter  route,  there  was  no  reason 
for  such  an  extraordinary  enterprise. 


«  I 


The  years  between  1474  and  1480  were  not  fa- 
vourable for  new  maritime  ventures  on  the  part  of 
the  Portuguese  government.  The  war  with  Castile 
absorbed  the  energies  of  Alfonso  V.  as  well  as  his 
money,  and  he  was  badly  beaten  into  the  bargain. 
About  this  time  Columbus  was  writing  a  treatise 
^  See  below,  vol.  ii.  p.  96. 


382 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Cohimbus's 
Bpeculationg 
on  climate. 


His  voyage 
to  Guinea. 


on  "  tlie  five  habitable  zones,"  intended  to  refute 
the  old  notions  about  regions  so  fiery 
or  so  frozen  as  to  be  inaccessible  to  man. 
As  this  book  is  lost  we  know  little  or 
nothing  of  its  views  and  speculations,  but  it  ap- 
pears that  in  writing  it  Columbus  utilized  sundry 
observations  made  by  himself  in  long  voyages  into 
the  torrid  and  arctic  zones.  He  spent  some  time 
at  the  fortress  of  San  Jorge  de  la  Mina, 
on  the  Gold  Coast,  and  made  a  study  of 
that  equinoctial  climate.^  This  could  not  have  been 
earlier  than  1482,  the  year  in  which  the  fortress 
was  built.  Five  years  before  this  he  seems  to  have 
gone  far  in  the  opposite  direction.  In  a  fragment 
of  a  letter  or  diary,  preserved  by  his  son  and  by 
Las  Casas,  he  says  :  —  ""In  the  month  of  February, 
1477, 1  sailed  a  hundred  leagues  beyond 
into  tiie  Arctic  the  islaud  of  Thulc,  [to  ?]  an  island  of 
which  the  south  part  is  in  latitude  73°, 
not  63°,  as  some  say ;  and  it  [i.  e.  Thule]  does  not 
lie  within  Ptolemy's  western  boundary,  but  much 
farther  west.  And  to  this  island,  which  is  as  big 
as  England,  the  English  go  with  their  wares,  es- 
pecially from  Bristol.  When  I  was  there  the  sea 
was  not  frozen.  In  some  places  the  tide  rose  and 
fell  twenty-six  fathoms.  It  is  true  that  the  Thule 
mentioned  by  Ptolemy  lies  where  he  says  it  does, 
and  this  by  the  moderns  is  called  Frislanda."  ^ 

^  Vita  deW  Ammiraglio,  cap.  iv. ;  Las  Casaa,  Historia,  torn.  i. 
p.  49. 

'^  "  lo  iiavigai  1'  anno  M  cccc  Lxxvii  nel  mese  di  Febraio  oltra 
Tile  iaola  cento  leglie,  la  cui  parte  Auutrale  6  lontana  dall'  Equi- 
nottiale  settantatr6  gradi,  o  non  3es3antatr6,  come  alcuni  vogliono ; 
n6  g^ace  dentro  della  linea,  che  include  1'  Occidente  di  Tuloraeo, 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


383 


Taken  as  it  stands  this  passage  is  so  bewildering 
that  we  can  hardly  suppose  it  to  have  come  in  just 
this  shape  from  the  pen  of  Columbus.  It  looks  as 
if  it  had  been  abridged  from  some  diary  of  his  by 
some  person  unfamiliar  with  the  Arctic  seas  ;  and 
I  have  ventured  to  insert  in  brackets  a  little  prep- 
osition which  may  perhaps  help  to  straighten  out 
the  meaning.  By  Thule  Columbus  doubtless  means 
Iceland,  which  lies  between  latitudes  64°  and  67°, 
and  it  looks  as  if  he  meant  to  say  that  he  ran  be- 
yond it  as  far  as  the  little  island,  just  a  hundred 
leagues  from  Iceland   and   in   latitude 

_  .  "     ,  1    1         T  nT  •       He  may  have 

71  ,  since  discovered  by  Jan  Mayen  m  reached  jan 
1611.  The  rest  of  the  paragraph  is 
more  intelligible.  It  is  true  that  Iceland  lies 
thirty  degrees  farther  west  than  Ptolemy  placed 
Thule ;  and  that  for  a  century  before  the  dis- 
covery of  the  Newfoundland  fisheries  the  English 
did   much  fishing   in   the   waters   about   Iceland, 

ma  h  molto  piii  Occidentale.  Et  a  qiiesta  isola,  che  6  tanto  grande, 
come  1'  Inghilterra,  vanno  gV  Inglesi  con  le  loro  mercatantie, 
specialmente  quelli  di  Bristol.  Et  al  tempo  che  io  vi  andai,  non 
era  congelato  il  mare,  quaiitunque  vi  fossero  si  grosse  maree,  che 
in  alcuni  luoghi  ascendeva  ventisei  braccia,  e  discendeva  altretanti 
in  altezza.  E  bene  il  vero,  che  Tile,  quella,  di  cui  Tolomeo  fa 
mentione,  giace  dove  egli  dice  ;  &  questa  da'  moderni  6  chiamata 
Frislanda."  Vita  delV  Ammiraglio,  cap.  iv.  In  the  original  edi- 
tion of  1571,  there  are  no  quotation-marks  ;  and  in  some  modern 
editions,  where  these  are  supplied,  the  quotation  is  wrongly  made 
to  end  just  before  the  last  sentence,  so  as  to  make  it  appear  like 
a  gloss  of  Ferdinand's.  This  is,  however,  impossible.  Ferdinand 
died  in  1639,  and  the  Zeno  narrative  of  Frislanda  was  not  pub- 
lished till  15.')S,  so  that  the  only  source  from  which  tliat  name 
could  have  come  into  his  book  was  his  father's  document.  The 
genuineness  of  the  passage  is  proved  by  its  recurrence,  almost 
word  for  word,  in  Las  Casas,  Historia,  torn.  i.  p.  48. 


!*■; 


«        I 


384 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


and  stopped 
at  luelaud. 


and  carried  wares  thither,  especially  from  Bristol.^ 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  by  Frislanda  Coluin. 
bus  means  the  Fjeroe  islands,^  which  do  lie  in 
the  latitude  though  not  in  the  longitude 
mentioned  by  Ptolemy.  As  for  the 
voyage  into  the  Jan  Mayen  waters  in  February,  it 
would  be  dangerous  but  by  no  means  impossible.^ 
In  another  letter  Columbus  mentions  visiting  Eng- 
land, apparently  in  connection  with  this  voyage,* 
and  it  is  highly  probable  that  he  went  in  an  Eng- 
lish ship  from  Bristol. 

The  object  of  Columbus  in  making  these  long 
voyages  to  the  equator  and  into  the  polar  circle 
was,  as  he  tells  us,  to  gather  observations  upon 
climate.  From  the  circumstance  of  his  having 
made  a  stop  at  some  point  in  Iceland,  it  was 
conjectured  by  Finn  Magnusson  that  Columbus 
might  have  learned  something  about  Vin- 
land  which  served  to  guide  him  to  his 
own  enterprise  or  to  encourage  him  in 
Starting  from  this  suggestion,  it 
has  been  argued  ^  that  Columbus  must 
have  read  the  geographical  appendix  to  Adam  of 
Bremen's  "  Ecclesiastical  History ; "  that  he  must 

^  See  Thorold  Rogers,  The  Economic  Interpretation  of  History, 
London,  1888,  pp.  103,  319. 
^  See  above,  p.  236. 

*  See  the  graphic  description  of  a  voyage  in  these  waters  in 
March,  1882,  in  Nansen's  The  First  Crossing  of  Greenland,  Lon- 
don, 1890,  vol.  i.  pp.  149-152. 

*  "E  vidi  tutto  il  Levante,  e  tutto  il  Ponente,  che  si  dice  per 
andare  verso  il  Settentrione,  ciofe  1'  Inghilterra,  e  ho  camminato 
per  la  Guinea."     Vita  delV  Ammiraglio,  cap.  iv. 

^  See  Anderson's  America  not  discovered  by  Co/um6us,  Chicago, 
1874 ;  3d  ed.  enlarged,  Chicago,  1883. 


The  hypoth- 
esis that  Co- 
lumbus "must 
have  "  heard 
and  under- 
stood the  .story    \^ 
of  the  Vinland    ^^* 
voyages. 


THE  SEA  ECU  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


385 


have  understood,  as  we  now  do,  the  reference 
therein  made  to  Vinland  ;  that  he  made  his  voyage 
to  Icehmd  in  order  to  obtain  further  information  ; 
that  he  there  not  only  heard  about  Vinland  and 
other  localities  nientioned  in  the  sagas,  but  also 
mentally  placed  them  about  where  they  were 
placed  in  1837  by  Professor  Rafn  ;  that,  among 
other  things,  he  thus  obtained  a  correct  knowledge 
of  the  width  of  the  Atlantic  ocean  in  latitude  28° 
N. ;  and  that  during  fifteen  subsequent  years  of 
weary  endeavour  to  obtain  ships  and  men  for  his 
westward  voyage,  he  sedulously  refrained  from 
using  the  most  convincing  argument  at  his  com- 
mand, —  namely  that  land  of  continental  dimen- 
sions had  actually  been  found  (though  by  a  very 
different  route)  in  the  direction  which  he  indi- 
cated. 

I  have  already  given  an  explanation  of  the  pro- 
cess by  which  Columbus  arrived  at  the  firm  belief 
that  by  sailing  not  more  than  about  2,500  geograph- 
ical miles  due  west  from  the  Canaries  he  should 
reach  the  coast  of  Japan.  Every  step  of  that  ex- 
planation is  sustained  by  documentary  evidence, 
and  as  his  belief  is  thus  completely  accounted  for, 
the  hypothesis  that  he  may  have  based  it  upon  in- 
formation obtained  in  Iceland  is,  tc  .ay  the  least, 
superfluous.  We  do  not  need  it  in  order  to  ex- 
plain his  actions,  and  accordingly  his  actions  do 
not  afford  a  presumption  in  favour  of  it.  There 
is  otherwise  no  reason,  of  course,  for  Thathypoth- 
refusing  to  admit  that  he  might  have  ey-(,p*Jfce"° 
obtained  information  in  Iceland,  were  '**  favour. 
there  any  evidence  that  he  did.     But  not  a  scrap 


«  » 


§: 


386 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


of  such  evidence  has  ever  been  produced.  Every 
step  in  the  Scandinavian  hypothesis  is  a  pure  as- 
sumption. 

First  it  is  assumed  that  Columbus  must  have 
read  the  appendix  to  Adam  of  Bremen's  history. 
But  really,  while  it  is  not  impossible  that  ne  should 
have  reaa  that  document,  it  is,  on  the 
ibSrhat'""'^  whole,  improbable.  The  appendix  was 
knero^f^Adam  first  printed  in  Lindenbrog's  edition, 
^Srio''  published  at  Leyden,  in  1595.  The 
viuiand,  eminent    Norwegian  historian,  Gustav 

Storm,  finds  that  in  the  sixteenth  century  just  six 
MSS.  of  Adam's  works  can  now  be  traced.  Of 
these,  two  were  preserved  in  Denmark,  two  in 
Hamburg,  one  had  perhaps  already  wandered 
southward  to  Leyden,  and  one  as  far  as  Vienna. 
Dr.  Storm,  therefore,  feels  sure  that 
wouKve  Columbus  never  saw  Adam's  mention 
rfTelT"'*  of  Vinland,  and  pithily  adds  that  "  had 
read  it.  Columbus  knowu  it,  it  would  not  have 

been  able  to  show  him  the  way  to  the  West  Indies, 
but  perhaps  to  the  North  Pole."  ^  From  the  ac- 
count of  this  mention  and  its  context,  which  I 
have  already  given,^  it  is  in  the  highest  degree  im- 
probable that  if  Columbus  had  read  the  passage  he 
could  have  understood  it  as  bearing  upon  his  own 
problem.     There  is,  therefore,  no  ground  for  the 

1  "  Det  er  derfor  sikkert,  at  Columbus  ikke,  som  nogle  har 
formodet,  kan  have  kjendt  Adam  af  Bremens  Beretuing  om  Vin- 
land ;  yi  kan  gjerne  tilfeie,  at  havde  Columbus  kjendt  den,  vilde 
den  ikke  have  kunnet  vise  ham  Vei  til  Vesten  (Indien),  meq 
kanske  til  Nordpolen."  Aarb^ger  for  Nordisk  Oldkyndighed, 
1887,  u.  2,  p.    A. 

2  See  above,  p.  210. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


387 


assumption   that   Columbus   went    to    Iceland    in 
order  to  make  inquiries  about  Vinland. 

It  may  be  argued  that  even  if  he  did  not  go  for 
such  a  purpose,  nevertheless  when  once  there  he 
could  hardly  have  failed  incidentally  to  get  the 
information.  This,  however,  is  not  ai,  all  clear. 
Observe  that  our  sole  authority  for  the  journey 
to  Iceland  is  the  passage  above  quoted  at  second- 
hand from  Columbus  himself;  and  there  is  no- 
thing in  it  to  show  whether  he  staid  a  few  hours 
or  several  weeks  ashore,  or  met  with  any 
one  likely  to  be  possessed  of  the  know- 
ledge in  question.  The  absence  of  any 
reference  to  Vinland  in  the  Zeno  narra- 
tive is  an  indication  that  the  memory  of  it  had  faded 
away  before  1400,  and  it  was  not  distinctly  and  gen- 
erally revived  until  the  time  of  Torfaeus  in  1705.^ 


It  is  doubtful 
if  Columbus 
would  have 
stumbled 
upon  the  story 
in  Iceland. 


^  In  1689  the  Swedish  writer,  Ole  Rudbeck,  could  not  under- 
stand Adam  of  Bremen's  allusion  to  Vinland.  The  passage  is 
instructive,  Rudbeck  declares  that  in  speaking  of  a  wine-grow- 
ing country  near  to  the  Arctic  ocean,  Adam  must  have  been  mis- 
led by  some  poetical  or  figurative  phrase  ;  he  was  deceived  either 
by  his  trust  in  the  Danes,  or  by  his  own  credulity,  for  he  mani- 
festly refers  to  Finland,  for  which  the  form  Vinland  does  not  once 
occur  in  Sturleson,  etc. :  —  "  Ne  tamen  poetis  solis  lioc  loquendi 
genus  in  suis  regionum  laudationibus  familiare  fuisse  quis  existi- 
met,  sacras  adeat  literas  quae  Palaestinae  faecunditatem  appella- 
tione  Jluentorum  lactis  &  mellis  designant.  Tale  aliquid,  sine  omne 
dubio,  Adamo  Bremensi  quondam  persuaserat  insulam  esse  in 
ultimo  septentrione  sitam,  mari  glaciali  vicinam,  vini  feracem,  & 
ea  propter  fide  tamen  Danorum,  Vinlandiam  dictam  prout  ipse 
.  .  .  fateri  non  dubitat.  Sed  deceptum  eum  hac  sive  Danorum 
fide,  sive  credulitate  sua  planum  facit  affine  isti  vocabulum  Fin- 
landioR  provineiae  ad  Regnum  nostrum  pertinentis,  pro  quo  apud 
Snorronem  &  in  Hist.  Kegum  non  semel  occurrit  Vinlandice  no- 
men,  cujus  promontorium  ad  ultimura  septentrlonem  &  visque  ad 
mare  glaciale  sese  extendit."  Rudbeck,  Atland  eller  Manheinif 
Upsala,  cir.  1680,  p.  291. 


I 


M 


388 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


If  he  had 
heard  it,  he 
would  prob- 
ably have 
claaaed  it 
with  such 
tales  as  that 
of  St.  Bran- 
dan's  i 


But  to  hear  about  Vinland  was  one  thing-,  to  be 
guided  by  it  to  Japan  was  quite  another  affair.  It 
was  not  the  mention  of  timber  and  peltries  and 
Skraelings  that  would  fire  the  imagination  of  Co- 
lumbus ;  his  dreams  were  of  stately  cities  with 
busy  wharves  where  ships  were  laden  with  silks 
and  jewels,  and  of  Oriental  magnates 
decked  out  with  "barbaric  pearl  and 
gold,"  dwelling  in  pavilions  of  marble 
and  jasper  amid  flowery  gardens  in  "  a 
summer  fanned  with  spice."  The  men- 
tion of  Vinland  was  no  more  likely  to 
excite  Columbus's  attention  than  that  of  St.  Bran- 
dan's  isle  or  other  places  supposed  to  lie  in  the 
western  ocean.     He  was  after  liigher  game. 

To  suppose  that  Columbus,  even  had  he  got 
hold  of  the  Saga  of  Eric  the  Red  and  conned  it 
from  beginning  to  end,  with  a  learned  interpreter 
at  his  elbow,  could  have  gained  from  it  a  know- 
ledge of  the  width  of  the  Atlantic  ocean, 
is  simply  preposterous.  It  would  be  im- 
possible to  extract  any  such  knowledge 
from  that  document  to-day  without  the 
aid  of  our  modern  maps.  The  most 
diligent  critical  study  of  all  the  Icelandic  sources 
of  information,  with  all  the  resources  of  modern 
scholarship,  enables  us  with  some  confidence  to 
place  Vinland  somewhere  between  Cape  Breton 
and  Point  Judith,  that  is  to  say,  somewhere  be- 
tween two  points  distant  from  each  other  more 
than  four  degrees  in  latitude  and  more  than  eleven 
degrees  in  longitude !  When  we  have  got  thus  far, 
knowing  as  we  do  that  the  coast  in  question  h& 


He  could  not 
have  obtained 
from  such  a 
source  his 
opinion  of  the 
width  of  the 
ocean. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


389 


longs  to  the  same  continental  system  as  the  West 
Indies,  we  can  look  at  our  map  and  pick  up  our 
pair  of  compasses  and  measure  the  width  of  the 
ocean  at  the  twenty-eighth  parallel.  But  it  is  not 
the  mediaBval  document,  but  our  modern  map  that 
guides  us  tc»  this  knowledge.  And  yet  it  is  inno- 
cently assumed  that  Columbus,  without  any  know- 
ledge or  suspicion  of  the  existence  of  America,  and 
from  such  vague  data  concerning  voyages  made  five 
hundred  years  before  his  time,  by  men  who  had  no 
means  of  reckoning  latitude  and  longitude,  could 
have  obtained  his  figure  of  2,500  miles  for  the 
voyage  from  the  Canaries  to  Japan  I  ^  The  fallacy 
here  is  that  which  underlies  the  whole  Scandina- 
vian hypothesis  and   many    other    fanciful    geo- 

^  The  source  of  such  a  confusion  of  ideas  is  probably  the  ridic- 
ulous map  in  Rafn's  Antiquitates  America/icBf  upon  which  North 
America  is  represented  in  all  the  accuracy  of  outline  attainable 
by  modern  maps,  and  then  the  Icelandic  names  are  put  on  where 
Rafn  thought  they  ought  to  go,  i.  e.  Markland  upon  Nova  Scotia, 
Vinland  upon  New  England,  etc.  Any  person  using  such  a  map 
is  liable  to  forget  that  it  cannot  possibly  represent  the  crude  no- 
tions of  locality  to  which  the  reports  of  the  Norse  voyages  must 
have  given  rise  in  an  ignorant  age.  (The  reader  will  find  the  map 
reproduced  in  Winsor,  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist. ,  i.  95.)  Rafn's  fault 
was,  however,  no  gi'eater  than  that  committed  by  the  modern 
makers  of  so-called  " ancient  atlases"  —  still  current  and  in  use 
in  schools  —  when,  for  example,  they  take  a  correct  modern  map 
of  Europe,  with  parts  of  Africa  and  Asia,  and  upon  countries  so 
dimly  known  to  the  ancients  as  Scandinavia  and  Hindustan,  but 
now  drawn  with  perfect  accuracy,  they  simply  print  the  ancient 
names !  !  Nothing  but  confusion  can  come  from  using  such 
wretched  maps.  The  only  safe  way  to  study  the  history  of 
geography  is  to  reproduce  the  ancient  maps  themselves,  as  I  have 
done  in  the  present  work.  Many  of  the  maps  given  below  in  the 
second  volume  will  illustrate  the  slow  and  painful  growth  of  the 
knowledge  of  the  North  American  coast  during  the  two  centuriea 
after  Columbus. 


w 


I  ill! 


:  nil 


I 


II  I i' 


ilif! 


I 


;|i.l!|! 


890 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


graphical  speculations.     It  is  the  fallacy  of  pro« 
jecting  our  present  knowledge  into  the  past. 

We  have  next  to  inquire,  if  Columbus  had  heard 
of  Vinland  and  comprehended  its  relation  to  his 
own  theory  about  land  at  the  west,  why  in  the 
world  should  he  have  concealed  this  val- 
knowii  and  uablc  knowlcdgc  ?  The  notion  seems  to 
the  vhiCd  be  that  he  must  have  kept  it  secret 
the^Btronge'st    through  an  unworthy  desire  to  claim  a 

motives  for  ..,•        i.  ,  I'li        i 

proclaiming  it  priority  in  discovery  to  which  he  knew 
for  concealing  that  hc  was  uot  entitled.^  This  is  pro- 
jecting our  present  knowledge  into  the 
past  with  a  vengeance.  Columbus  never  professed 
to  have  discovered  America ;  he  died  in  the  belief 
that  what  he  had  done  was  to  reach  the  eastern 
shores  of  Asia  by  a  shorter  route  than  the  Portu- 
guese. If  he  had  reason  to  suppose  that  the  North- 
men had  once  come  down  from  the  Arctic  seas  to 
some  unknown  part  of  the  Asiatic  coast,  he  had  no 
motive  for  concealing  such  a  fact,  but  the  strongest 
of  motives  for  proclaiming  it,  inasmuch  as  it  would 
have  given  him  the  kind  of  inductive  argument 
which  he  sorely  needed.  The  chief  obstacle  for 
Columbus  was  that  for  want  of  tangible  evidence 
he  was  obliged  to  appeal  to  men's  reason  with 
scientific  argu  -^onts.  When  you  show  things  to 
young  children  they  are  not  content  with  looking ; 
they  crave  a  more  intimate  acquaintance  than  the 
eyes  alone  can  give,  and  so  they  reach  out  and 

1  "  The  fault  that  we  find  with  Columbus  is,  that  he  was  not 
honest  and  frank  enough  to  tell  where  and  how  he  had  obtained 
his  previous  information  about  the  lands  which  he  pretended  to 
discover."     Anderaon,  America  not  discovered  by  Columbus,  p.  90. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


391 


handle  the  things.  So  when  ideas  are  presented  to 
grown-up  men,  they  are  apt  to  be  unwilling  to  trust 
to  the  eye  of  reason  until  it  has  been  supplemented 
by  the  eye  of  sense  ;  and  indeed  in  most  affairs  of 
life  such  caution  is  wholesome.  The  difference  be- 
tween Columbus  and  many  of  the  "  practical "  men 
whom  he  sought  to  convince  was  that  he  could  see 
with  his  mind's  eye  solid  land  beyond  the  Sea  of 
Darkness  while  they  could  not.  To  them  the  ocean, 
like  the  sky,  had  nothing  beyond,  unless  it  might  be 
the  supernatural  world.^  For  while  the  argument 
from  the  earth's  rotundity  was  intelligible  enough, 
there  were  few  to  whom,  as  to  Toscanelli,  it  was  a 
living  truth.  Even  of  those  who  admitted,  in  the- 
ory, that  Cathay  lay  to  the  west  of  Europe,  most 
deemed  the  distance  untraversable.  Inductive 
proof  of  the  existence  of  accessible  land  to  the 
west  was  thus  what  Columbus  chiefly  needed,  and 
what  he  sought  every  opportunity  to  find  and  pro- 
duce ;  but  it  was  not  easy  to  find  anything  more 
substantial  than  sailors'  vague  mention  of  drift- 
wood of  foreign  aspect  or  other  outlandish  jetsam 
washed  up  on  the  Portuguese  strand.^     What  a 


>iM' 


iMi 


^  See  below,  p.  398,  note. 

^  For  example,  the  pilot  Martin  Vicenti  told  Columbus  that 
1 ,200  miles  west  of  Cape  St.  Vincent  he  had  picked  up  from  the 
sea  a  piece  of  carved  wood  evidently  not  carved  with  iron  tools. 
Pedro  Correa,  who  had  married  Columbus's  wife's  sister,  had  seen 
iipon  Porto  Santo  a  similar  piece  of  carving  that  had  drifted  from 
the  west.  Huge  reeds  sometimes  floated  ashore  upon  those  islands, 
and  had  not  Ptolemy  mentioned  enormous  reeds  as  growing  in 
eastern  Asia  ?  Pine-trees  of  strange  species  were  driven  by  west 
winds  upon  the  coast  of  Fayal,  and  two  corpses  of  men  of  an  un- 
known race  had  been  washed  ashoie  u  ■  the  neighbouring  island 
of  Mores.    Certain  sailors,  on  a  voyagt      jm  the  Azores  to  Ireland, 


i.'  M 


jiiiiii 


892 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


godsend  it  would  have  been  for  Columbus  if  he 
could  have  had  the  Vinland  business  to  hurl  at  the 
heads  of  his  adversaries  1  If  he  could  have  said, 
"  Five  hundred  years  ago  some  Icelanders  coasted 
westward  in  the  polar  regions,  and  then  coasted 
southward  until  they  reached  a  country  beyond 
the  ocean  and  about  opposite  to  France  or  Portu- 
gal ;  therefore  that  country  must  be  Asia,  and  I 
can  reach  it  by  striking  boldly  across  the  ocean, 
which  will  obviously  be  shorter  than  going  down 
by  Guinea,"  —  if  he  could  have  said  this,  he  would 
have  had  precisely  the  unanswerable  argument  for 
lack  of  which  his  case  was  waiting  and  suffering. 
In  persuading  men  to  furnish  hard  cash  for  his 
commercial  enterprise,  as  Colonel  Higginson  so 
neatly  says,  "an  ounce  of  Vinland  would  have 
been  worth  a  pound  of  cosmography."  ^  We  may 
be  sure  that  the  silence  of  Columbus  about  the 
Norse  voyages  proves  that  he  knew  nothing  about 
them  or  quite  failed  to  see  their  bearings  upon  his 
own  undertaking.  It  seems  to  me  absolutely  deci- 
sive. 

Furthermore,  this  silence  is  in  harmony  with  the 
fact  that  in  none  of  his  four  voyages  across  the 
Atlantic  did  Columbus  betray  pny  consciousness 
that  there  was  anything  for  him  to  gain  by  steer- 
ing toward  the  northwest.  If  he  could  correctly 
have  conceived  the  position  of  Vinland  he  surely 
would  not  have  conceived  it  as  south  of  the  for- 
bad caught  glimpses  of  land  on  the  west,  and  believed  it  to  be  the 
coast  of  "  Tartary ;  "  etc.,  etc.  See  Vita  deW  Ammiroglio,  cap.  ix. 
Since  he  cited  these  sailors,  why  did  he  not  cite  the  Northmen  aiso, 
if  he  knew  what  they  had  done  ? 

1  Larger  History  of  the  United  States,  p.  54, 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


393 


tieth  parallel.     On  his  first  voyage  he  steered  due 
west  in  latitude  28°  because  Toacanelli  Notrn.eof» 
l)laced    Japan    opposite    the    Canaries,   viuiimdap- 
When  at  length  some  douhts  began  to  loynKesor 
arise  and  he  altered  his  course,  as  we 
shall  hereafter  see,  the  change  was   toward    the 
southwest.    His  first  two  voyages  did  not  reveal  to 
him  the  golden  cities  for  which  he  was  looking,  and 
when  on  his  third  and  fourth  voyages  he  tried  a 
different  course  it  was  farther  toward  the  equator, 
not  farther  away  from  it,  that  he  turned  his  prows. 
Not  the  slightest  trace  of  a  thought  of  Vinland 
appears  in  anything  that  he  did. 

Finally  it  may  be  asked,  if  the  memory  of  Vin- 
land was  such  a  living  thing  in  Iceland  in  1477 
that  a  visitor  would  be  likely  to  be  told  about  it, 
why  was  it  not  sufficiently  alive  in  1493 
to  call  forth  a  protest  from  the  North  ?  Norway  m 

tiri  .i  1-1  ii        Iceland  utter 

When  the  pope,  as  we  shall  presently  ai.roteatiu 
see,  was  proclaiming  to  the  world  that 
the  Spanish  crown  was  entitled  to  all  heathen  lands 
and  islands  already  discovered  or  to  be  discovered 
in  the  ocean  west  of  the  Azores,  why  did  not  some 
zealous  Scandinavian  at  once  jump  up  and  cry  out, 
"  Look  here,  old  Columbus,  we  discovered  that 
western  route,  you  know  !  Stop  thief  !  "  Why 
was  it  necessary  to  wait  more  than  a  hundred 
years  longer  before  the  affair  of  Vinland  was  men- 
tioned in  this  connection? 

Simply  because  it  was  not  until  the  seventeenth 
century  that  the  knowledge  of  North  American 
geography  had  reached  such  a  stage  of  complete- 
ness as  to  suggest  to  anybody  the  true  significance 


I  ii 


394 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


The  idea  of 
Viiiland  was 
not  associated 
with  the  idea 
of  America 
until  the  sev- 
enteenth cen- 
tury. 


of  the  old  voyasres  from  Greenland.  That  siofnifi- 
cance  could  not  have  beei  >  understood  by  Leif  and 
Thorfinn  themselves,  or  by  the  compilers  of  Hauks- 
bok  and  Flateyar-bok,  or  by  any  hiunan  being,  un- 
til about  the  time  of  Henry  Hudson.  Not  earlier 
than  that  time  should  we  expect  to  find 
it  mentioned,  and  it  is  just  then,  in  1610, 
that  we  do  find  it  mentioned  by  Arngi-im 
Jonsson,  who  calls  Vinland  "  an  island 
of  America^  in  the  region  of  Green- 
land, perhaps  the  modern  Estotilandia."  ^  This  is 
the  earliest  glimmering  of  an  association  of  the 
idea  of  Vinland  with  that  of  America. 

^  "  Terrain  ver6  Landa  Rolfoni  qusesitam  existimarem  esse  Vin- 
landiam  olim  Islandis  sic  dictam ;  de  qua  alibi  insulam  nempe 
Americae  e  regione  Gronlandiae,  quae  fort6  hodie  Estotilandia," 
etc.     Crymogcea,  Hamburg,  1610,  p.  120. 

Abraham  Orteliua  in  100(5  speaks  of  the  Northmen  coming  to 
America,  but  bases  his  opinion  upon  the  Zeno  narrative  (published 
in  1558)  and  upon  the  sound  of  the  name  Norumbega,  and  appar- 
ently knows  nothing  of  Vinland :  —  "  losephus  Acosta  in  his  book* 
De  Natura  noui  orbis  indeuors  by  many  reasons  to  prone,  that 
this  part  of  America  was  originally  inhabited  by  certaine  Indians, 
forced  thither  by  tempestuous  weather  ouer  the  South  sea  which 
now  they  call  Mare  del  Zur.  But  to  me  it  seemes  more  probable, 
out  of  the  historie  of  the  two  Zeni,  gentlemen  of  Venice,  .  .  .  that 
this  New  World  many  ages  past  was  entred  upon  by  some  island- 
ers of  Europe,  as  namely  of  Greenland,  Island,  and  Frisland  ;  being 
much  neerer  thereunto  than  tlie  Indians,  nor  disioyned  thence  .  .  . 
by  an  Ocean  so  huge,  and  to  the  Indians  so  vnnauigable.  Also, 
what  else  may  we  coniecture  to  be  signified  by  this  Norumbega  [the 
name  of  a  North  region  of  America]  but  that  from  Norway,  sig- 
nifying a  North  land,  some  Colonie  in  times  past  hath  hither 
beene  transplanted  ?  "  Theatre  of  the  Whole  World,  London,  1600, 
p.  5.  These  passages  are  quoted  and  discussed  by  Reeves,  The 
Find^  7  of  Wirieland  the  Good,  pp.  95,  06.  The  supposed  con- 
nection of  Norumbega  with  Norway  is  very  doubtful.  Possibly 
Stephiiuius,  in  his  map  of  1570  (TorfiBus,  Gronlandia  antiqua, 
17U()),  uiay  have  had  reference  to  Labrador  or  the  north  of  New< 
foundland. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


395 


The  genesis  of  the  grand  scheme  of  Columbus 
fias  now  been  set  forth,  I  beUeve,  with  sufficient 
fubiess.  The  cardinal  facts  are  1,  that  the  need 
?or  some  such  scheme  was  suggested  in  R^g^nj^  ^j  tjjj, 
1471,  by  the  discovery  that  the  Guinea  go"umbSl'B 
"Boast  extended  south  of  the  equator;  8ch«°ie- 
2,  that  by  1474  advice  had  been  sought  from 
Toscanelli  by  the  king  of  Portugal,  and  not  very 
long  after  1474  by  Columbus;  3,  that  upon  Tos- 
canelli's  letters  and  map,  amended  by  the  Ptole- 
maic estimate  of  the  earth's  size  and  by  the  author- 
ity of  passages  quoted  in  the  book  of  Allia(3us  (one 
of  which  was  a  verse  from  the  Apocrypha),  Colum- 
bus based  his  firm  conviction  of  the  feasibleness  of 
the  western  route.  How  or  by  whom  the  sugges- 
tion of  that  route  was  first  made  —  whether  by 
Columbus  himself  or  by  Toscaneili  or  by  Fernando 
Martinez  or,  as  Antonio  Gallo  declares,  by  Barthol- 
omew Coliunbus,^  or  by  some  person  in  Portugal 
whose  name  we  know  not  —  it  would  be  difficult  to 
decide.  Neither  can  we  fix  the  date  when  Colum- 
bus first  sought  aid  for  his  scheme  from  the  Portu- 
guese government.  There  seems  to  be  no  good 
reason  why  he  should  not  have  been  talking  about 
it  before  1474  ;  but  the  affair  did  not  come  to  any 
kind  of  a  climax  until  after  his  return  from  Guinea, 
some  time  after  1482  and  certainly  not  jj^^.^^ 
later  than  1484.  It  was  on  some  ac- 
counts a  favourable  time, 
with  Castile  was  out  of  the  way,  and  Martin  Be- 
haim  had  just  invented  an  improved  astrolabe  which 

^  Gallo,  De  navigatione  Columbi,  apud  Muratori,  Rerum  Itali- 
f/arum  Scriptores,  torn,  xxiii.  col.  302.  , 


Behaim's 
improved 
The     war    asfolabe. 


'I. 


;li»  ^ 


%  • 


.h 


396 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


made  it  ever  so  much  easier  to  find  and  keep  one's 
latitude  at  sea.  It  was  in  1484  that  Portuguese 
discoveries  took  a  fresh  start  after  a  ten  years'  lull, 
and  Diego  Cam,  with  the  learned  Behaim  and  his 
bran-new  astrolabe  on  board,  was  about  to  sail  a 
thousand  miles  farther  south  than  white  men  had 
ever  gone  before.  About  this  time  the  scheme  of 
Columbus  was  formally  referred  by  King  John  II. 
to  the  junto  of  learned  cosmographers  from  whom 
the  crown  had  been  wont  to  seek  advice.  The  pro- 
ject was  condemned  as  "  visionary,"  ^  as  indeed  ifc 
was,  —  the  outcome  of  vision  that  saw  farther  than 
those  men  could  see.  But  the  king,  who  had  some 
of  his  uncle  Prince  Henry's  love  for  bold  enter- 
prises, was  more  hospitably  inclined  toward  the 
ideas  of  Coliunbus,  and  he  summoned  a  council  of 
Negotiations  *^^  most  learned  men  in  the  kingdom  to 
with'joiTil'ii.  discuss  the  question.^  In  this  council 
of  Portugal.      ^]jg  jjg^  scheme  found  some  defenders, 

while  others  correctly  urged  that  Columbus  nmst 
be  wrong  in  supposing  Asia  to  extend  so  far  to 
the  east,  and  it  must  be  a  much  longer  voyage 
than  he  supposed  to  Cipango  and  Cathay.^    Others 

^  Lafiiente,  Historia  de  Espaha,  torn.  ix.  p.  428. 

^  Vasconcellos,  Vida  del  rey  Don  Juan  II.,  lib.  iv. ;  La  Clfede, 
Sistoire  de  Portugal,  lib.  xiii. 

'  The  Portuguese  have  never  been  able  to  for^ve  Columbus  for 
discovering'  a  new  world  for  Spain,  and  their  chagrin  sometimes 
vents  itself  in  amusing  ways.  After  all,  says  Cordeiro,  Columbus 
was  no  such  great  man  aa  some  people  think,  for  he  did  not  dis- 
cover what  he  promised  to  discover ;  and,  moreover,  the  Portu- 
guese geographers  were  right  in  condemning  his  scheme,  because 
it  really  is  not  so  far  by  sea  from  Lisbon  arotind  Africa  to  Hin- 
dustan as  from  Lisbon  by  any  practicable  route  westward  to 
Japan!     See  Luciano  Cordeiro,  De  la  part  prise  par  les  Portogait 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


397 


argued  that  the  late  war  had  impoverished  the 
country,  and  that  the  enterprises  on  the  African 
coast  were  all  that  the  treasury  could  afford.  Here 
the  demands  of  Columbus  were  of  themselves  an 
obstacle  to  his  success.  He  never  at  any  time 
held  himself  cheap/  and  the  rewards  and  honours 
for  which  he  insisted  on  stipulating  were  greater 
than  the  king  of  Portugal  felt  inclined  to  bestow 
upon  a  plain  Genoese  mariner.  It  was  felt  that  if 
the  enterprise  should  prove  a  failure,  as  very  likely 
it  would,  the  less  heartily  the  government  should 
have  committed  itself  to  it  beforehand,  the  less  it 
would  expose  itseK  to  ridicule.  King  John  was 
not  in  general  disposed  toward  unfair  and  dishon- 
est dealings,  but  on  this  occasion,  after  much  par- 
ley, he  was  persuaded  to  sanction  a  proceeding 

dans  la  d^couvsrte  d^Amerique,  Lisbon,  1870,  pp.  23,  24,  29,  30. 
Well,  I  don't  know  that  there  is  any  answer  to  be  made  to  this 
argument.     Logic  is  logic,  says  the  wise  Autocrat :  — 

"  End  of  the  wonderful  one-hosa  shay, 
Logic  is  logic,  that 's  all  I  say." 

Cordeiro's  book  is  elaborately  criticised  in  the  learned  work  of 
Prospero  Peragallo,  Cristoforo  Colombo  in  Portogallo :  studi  critici, 
Genoa,  1882. 

^  "  Perciocch^  essendo  1'  Ammiraglio  di  generosi  ed  alti  pensieri, 
voile  capitoJare  con  suo  grande  onore  e  vantaggio,  per  lasciar  la 
memoria  sua,  e  la  grandezza  della  sua  ca.sa,  confonne  alia  gran- 
dezza  delle  sue  opere  e  de'  suoi  meriti."  Vita  deW  Ammiraglio, 
oap.  xi.  The  jealous  Portuguese  historian  speaks  in  a  somewhat 
different  tone  from  the  affectionate  son : —  "  Ve6  reqnerer  A,  el  rey 
Dom  JoSo  que  le  desse  algums  navios  pera  ir  ii  descobrir  a  ilha 
de  Gypango  [^sic]  per  esta  mar  occidental.  ...  El  rey,  porque  via 
ser  este  Christovao  Colom  homem  falador  e  glorioso  em  mostrar 
suas  habilidades,  e  mas  fantastico  et  de  imaginacao  com  sua  ilha 
de  Cypango,  que  certo  no  que  dezi.a:  davalhe  pouco  credito." 
Btarros,  Decada  primeira  da  Asia,  Lisbon,  1752,  liv.  iii.  cap.  xi. 
fol.  56. 


i!iii' 


i 


!i 


198 


TIIE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


quite  unworthy  of  him.  Having  obtained  Colum- 
A  shabby  hus's  Sailing  plans,  he  sent  out  a  ship 
trick.  secretly,  to   carry  some   goods   to   the 

Cape  Verde  islands,  and  then  to  try  the  experi- 
ment of  the  westward  voyage.  If  there  should 
turn  out  to  be  anything  profitable  in  the  scheme, 
this  would  be  safer  and  more  frugal  than  to  meet 
the  exorbitant  demands  of  this  ambitious  foreigner. 
So  it  was  done ;  but  the  pilots,  having  no  grand 
idea  to  urge  them  forward,  lost  heart  before  the  stu- 
pendous expanse  of  waters  that  confronted  them, 
and  beat  an  ignominious  retreat  to  Lisbon  ;  where- 
upon Columbus,  having  been  informed 
ieav"Tp!frtu-  of  the  trick,!  departed  in  high  dudgeon, 
^* '  to  lay  his  proposals  before  the  crown  of 

Castile.     He  seems  to  have  gone  rather  suddenly, 

1  It  has  been  urged  in  the  king's  defence  that  "such  a  pro- 
ceeding was  not  an  instance  of  bad  faith  or  perfidy  (!)  but  rather 
of  the  policy  customary  at  that  time,  which  consisted  in  distrust- 
ing everything  that  was  foreign,  and  in  promoting  by  whatever 
means  the  national  glory."  Yes,  indeed,  whether  the  means  were 
fair  or  foul.  Of  course  it  was  a  common  enough  policy,  but  it 
was  lying  and  cheating  all  the  same.  "  Nao  f oi  sem  duvida  por 
mk  f^  ou  perfidia  que  tacitamente  se  mandon  armar  hum  navio  ii 
cujo  capitao  se  confiou  o  piano  que  Colombo  havia  proposto,  e  cuja 
execugao  se  Ihe  encarregou  ;  mas  sim  por  seguir  a  polixica  naquelle 
tempo  usada,  que  toda  consistia  em  olliar  com  desconfiau^a  para 
tudo  o  que  era  estrangeiro,  e  en  proraover  por  todos  os  modos  a 
gloria  nacional.  O  capitao  nomeado  para  a  empreza,  como  nao 
tivesse  nem  o  espirito,  nem  a  convic§ao  de  Colombo,  depois  de 
huma  curta  viagem  uos  mares  do  Oeste,  fez-se  na  volta  da  terra : 
e  arribou  k  Lisboa  descontente  e  desanimado."  Campe,  Historia 
do  descohrimento  da  America,  Paris,  183(5,  tom.  i.  p.  13.  The 
frightened  sailors  protested  that  vou  moht  as  well  expect  to 

FIND    LAND   IN   THE    HKY    AS   IN   THAT    WASTE    OF  WATERS  !        See 

Las  Casas,  Hist,  de  las  Indias,  tom.  i.  p.  221.     Las  Casas  calls  thi 
king's  conduct  by  its  right  name,  dobladura,  "  trickery." 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


399 


leaving  liis  wife,  who  died  shortly  after,  and  one 
or  two  children  who  must  also  have  died,  for  he 
tells  us  that  he  never  saw  them  again.  But  his 
son  Diego,  aged  perhaps  four  or  five  years,  he  took 
with  him  as  far  as  the  town  of  Iluelva,  near  the 
little  port  of  Palos  in  Andalusia,  where  he  left  him 
with  one  of  his  wife's  sisters^  who  had  married  a 
man  of  that  town  named  Muliar.^  This  arrival  in 
Spain  was  probal)ly  late  in  the  autumn  of  1484, 
and  Columbus  seems  to  have  entered  and  enters  the 
into  the  service  of  Ferdinand  and  Isa-  sp'^jViLVsovw- 
bella  January  20,  1486.  What  he  was  "'^I's,  hsg. 
doing  in  the  interval  of  rather  more  than  a  year 
is  not  known.      There  is  a  very  doubtful  tradition 

^  It  has  generally  been  supposed,  on  the  authority  of  Vita  dell* 
Arnmiraglio,  cap.  xi.,  that  his  wife  had  lately  died ;  but  an  auto- 
graph letter  of  Columbus,  in  the  possession  of  his  lineal  descend- 
ant and  representative  the  present  Duke  of  Veraguas,  proves  that 
this  is  a  mistake.  In  this  letter  Columbus  says  expressly  that 
■when  he  left  Portugal  he  left  wife  and  children,  and  never  saw 
them  again.  (Navarrete,  Coleccion,  '^■^nx.  ii.  doc.  cxxxvii.  p.  '2')5.) 
Ac  Las  Casas,  who  knew  Diego  so  Avell,  also  supposed  his  mother 
to  have  died  before  his  father  left  Portugal,  it  is  most  likely  that 
she  died  soon  afterwards.  Ferdinand  Columbus  says  that  Diego 
was  left  in  charge  of  some  friars  at  the  convent  of  La  Rilbida 
near  Palos  {loc.  cit.) ;  Las  Casas  is  not  quite  so  sure ;  he  thinks 
Diego  was  left  with  some  friend  of  his  father  at  Palos,  or  perhaps 
(por  Ventura)  at  La  Rdbida.  (Historia,  torn,  i.  p.  221.)  These 
mistakes  were  easy  to  make,  for  both  La  R.ibida  and  Huelva  were 
close  by  Palos,  and  we  know  that  Diego's  aunt  Muliar  was  living 
at  Huelva.  (Las  Casas,  op.  cit.  torn.  i.  p.  241 ;  Harrisse,  tom.  i. 
pp.  279,  350,  391 ;  tom.  ii.  p.  229.)  It  is  pretty  clear  that  Colum- 
bus never  visited  La  Kdbida  before  the  autumn  of  14i(l  (see  be- 
low, p.  412).  My  own  notion  is  that  Columbus  may  have  left  his 
wife  with  an  infant  and  perhaps  one  older  child,  relieving  her  of 
the  care  of  Diego  by  taking  him  to  his  aunt,  and  intending  us  soon 
as  practicable  to  reunite  the  family.  lie  clearly  did  not  know  at 
the  outset  whether  he  should  stay  iu  iSpam  or  not. 


t 


•  •«  »«i*  •■.•■< 


••*  >i***'^*>*  a*^f*.  »*■«•«« 


400 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


that  he  tried  to  iaterest  the  republic  of  Genoa 
in  his  enterprise/  and  a  still  more  doubtful  ru- 
mour that  he  afterwards  made  proposals  to  the 
Venetian  senate.'^  If  these  things  ever  happened, 
there  was  time  enough  for  them  in  this  year,  and 
they  can  hardly  be  assigned  to  any  hiter  period. 
In  1486  we  find  Columbus  at  Cordova,  where  the 
sovereigns  were  holding  court.  He  was  unable  to 
effect  anything  until  he  had  gained  the  ear  of  Isa- 
bella's finance  minister  Alonso  de  Quinianilla,  who 
had  a  mind  hospitable  to  large  ideas.  The  two 
sovereigns  had  scarcely  time  to  attend  to  such 
things,  for  there  was  a  third  king  in  Spain,  the 
Moor  at  Granada,  whom  there  now  seemed  a  fair 
prospect  of  driving  to  Africa,  and  thus  ending  the 
struggle  that  had  lasted  with  few  intermissions  for 
nearly  eight  centuries.  The  final  war  with  Gra- 
nada had  been  going  on  since  the  end  of  1481,  and 
considering  how  it  weighed  upon  the  minds  of  Fer- 
dinand and  Isabella  it  is  rather  remarkable  that 
cosmography  got  any  hearing  at  all.  The  affair 
was  referred  to  the  queen's  confessor  Fernando  de 
Talavera,  whose  fi^rst  impression  was  that  if  what 
Columbus  said  was  true,  it  was  very  strange  that 
other  geographers  should  have  failed  to  Icnow  all 
about  it  long  ago.  Ideas  of  evolution  had  not  yet 
begun  to  exist  in  those  days,  and  it  was  thought 
that  what  the  ancients  did  not  know  was  not  worth 

^  It  rests  upon  an  improbable  statement  of  Ramusio,  who  places 
the  event  as  early  as  1470.  The  first  Genoese  writer  to  allude  to 
it  is  Caaoni,  Annali  della  Republica  di  Geneva,  Genoa,  1708,  pp. 
26-31.     Such  testimony  is  of  small  value. 

2  First  mentioned  in  1800  by  Marin,  Storia  del  commercio  d^ 
Veneziani,  Venice,  1798-1808,  torn.  vii.  p.  236. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


401 


knowing.  Toward  the  end  of  1486  the  Spanish 
sovereigns  were  at  Salamanca,  and  Talavera  re- 
ferred the  question  to  a  junto  of  learned  Ti,e  junto  at 
men,  including  professors  of  the  famous  Salamanca. 
university.^  There  was  no  lack  of  taunt  and  ridi- 
cule, and  a  whole  arsenal  of  texts  from  Scripture 
and  the  Fathers  were  discharged  at  Columbus,  but 
it  is  noticeable  that  quite  a  number  were  inclined 
to  think  that  his  scheme  might  be  worth  trying, 
and  that  some  of  his  most  firmly  convinced  sup- 
porters were  priests.  No  decision  had  been  reached 
when  the  sovereigns  started  on  the  Malaga  cam- 
paign in  the  spring  of  1487. 

After  the  surrender  of  Malaga  in  August,  1487, 
Columbus  visited  the  court  in  that  city.  For  a 
year  or  more  after  that  time  silken  chains  seem  to 
have  bound  him  to  Cordova.  He  had  formed  a 
connection  with  a  lady  of  noble  family,  gjj,jjj  ^^ 
Beatriz  Enriquez  de  Arana,  who  gave  coi'umCs^ 
birth  to  his  son  Ferdinand  on  the  15th  -^"k-  ^^'  "^• 
of  August,  1488.2  Shortly  after  this  event,  Colum- 
bus made  a  visit  to  Lisbon,  in  all  probability  for 


K 


^  The  description  usually  given  of  this  conference  rests  upon 
the  authority  of  Remesal,  Historia  de  la  prouincia  de  Chyapa,  Ma- 
drid, 1019,  lib.  ii.  cap.  vii.  p.  52.  Las  Casas  merely  says  that  tht 
question  was  referred  to  certain  persons  at  the  court,  Hist,  de  la., 
Indias,  torn,  i,  p.  228.  It  is  probably  not  true  that  the  project  of 
Columbus  was  officially  condemned  by  the  university  of  Sala- 
manca as  a  corporate  body.  See  Camara,  Religion  y  Ciencia,  Val- 
ladolid,  1880,  p.  261. 

2  Some  historians,  unwilling  to  admit  any  blemishes  in  the 
character  of  Columbus,  have  supposed  that  this  union  was  sanc- 
tioned by  marriape,  but  this  is  not  probable.  He  seems  to  have 
been  tenderly  attached  to  Beatriz,  who  survived  him  many  years. 
Bee  Harrisse,  torn.  ii.  pp.  ^53-357. 


402 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Bartholomew 
CoIumbuB 
returua  from 
the  Cape  of 
Oood  Hope, 
Dec.,  1487. 


the  purpose  of  meeting  his  brother  BartKjIomew, 
who  had  returned  in  the  last  w^eek  of 
December,  1487,  in  the  Dias  expedition, 
with  the  proud  news  of  the  discovery 
of  the  Cape  of  Good  liope,^  which  was 

*  The  authority  for  Bartholomew  Columbus  having  sailed  to 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  with  Dias  is  a  manuscript  note  of  his  own 
in  Christopher's  copy  of  the  Imago  Mundi :  "  Nota  quod  hoc  anno 
de  88  [it  should  be  87]  in  raense  decenibri  appulit  in  lllixbona 
Bartholomeus  Didacus  ca]>itaneus  trium  carabelarum  quern 
raiserat  serenissimus  rex  Portugalie  in  Guineam  ad  tentandum 
terram.  Et  renunciavit  ipse  serenissimo  regi  prout  navigaverat 
ultra  jam  navigata  leuchas  GOO,  videlicet  450  ad  austrum  et  150 
ad  aquilonem  usque  montem  per  ipsum  nominatum  Cabo  de  boa 
esperanqa  quom  in  Agesimba  estimamus.  Qui  quidem  in  eo  loco 
invenit  se  distare  per  astrolabium  ultra  lineam  equinoctialem  gra- 
dus  35.  Quem  viagium  pictavit  et  scripsit  de  leucha  in  leucham 
in  una  carta  navigationis  ut  oculi  visum  ostenderet  ipso  serenissimo 
regi.  In  quibus  omnibus  interfui."  M.  Varnhagen  has  examined 
this  note  and  thinks  it  is  in  the  handwriting  of  Christopher  Co- 
lumbus {Bulletin  de  G^ographie,  Janvier,  1858,  torn.  xv.  p.  71)  ; 
and  M.  d'Avezac  (Canevas  chronologique,  p.  58),  accepting  this 
opinion,  thir.ks  that  the  words  in  quibus  omnibus  interfui,  "  in  all 
of  which  I  took  part,"  only  mean  that  Christopher  was  present 
in  Lisbon  when  the  expedition  returned,  and  heard  the  whole 
story  !  With  all  possible  respect  for  such  great  scholars  as  MM. 
d'Avezac  and  Varnhagen,  I  submit  that  the  opinion  of  Las  Caisas, 
who  first  caUed  attention  to  this  note,  must  be  much  better  than 
theirs  on  such  a  point  as  the  handwriting  of  the  two  brothers. 
When  Las  Casas  found  the  note  he  wondered  whether  it  was 
meant  for  Bartholomew  or  Christopher,  i.  e.  wondered  which  of 
the  two  was  meant  to  be  described  as  having  "  taken  part ;  "  but 
at  all  events,  says  Las  Casas,  the  handwriting  is  Bartholomew's  : — 
"  Estas  son  palabras  escritas  de  la  mano  de  Bartolom^  Colon,  no 
b6  si  las  escribid  de  si  6  de  su  letra  por  su  hennano  Cristobal 
Colon."  Under  these  circumstances  it  seems  idle  to  suppose  that 
Las  Casas  could  have  been  mistaken  about  the  handwriting ;  he 
evidently  put  his  mind  on  that  point,  and  in  the  next  breath  he 
goes  on  to  say,  ' '  la  letra  yo  conozco  ser  de  Bartolom^  Colon, 
porque  tuve  muchas  suyas,"  i.  e.  "I  know  it  is  Bartholomew's 
writing,  for  I  have  had  many  letters  of  his  ;  "  and  again  "  estai 


t/t^^atdmuA 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


403 


rightly  believed  to  be  the  extremity  of  Africa ;  and 
we  can  well  understand  how  Christopher,  on  seeing 
the  success  of  Prince  Henry's  method  of  reaching 
the  Indies  so  nearly  vindicated,  must  have  become 
more  impatient  than  ever  to  prove  the  superiority 
of   his  own   method.     It  was   probably  not   long 

palabras  .  .  .  de  la  misma  letra  y  mano  de  Bartolom^  Colon,  la 
cual  miiy  bien  conocl  y  agora  tengo  hartas  cartas  y  letraa  suyas, 
tratando  deste  viaje,"  i.  e.  "  these  words  .  .  .  from  the  verj- 
•writing  and  hand  of  Bartholomew  Columbus,  which  I  knew  very 
well,  and  I  have  to-day  many  charts  and  letters  of  his,  treating 
of  this  voyage."  {Hist,  de  las  Indias,  torn.  i.  pp.  213,  214. )  This 
last  sentence  makes  Las  Casas  an  independent  witness  to  Bar- 
tholomew's presence  in  the  expedition,  a  matter  about  which  he 
was  not  likely  to  be  mistaken.  What  puzzled  him  was  the  question, 
not  whether  Bartholomew  went,  but  whether  Christopher  could 
have  gone  also,  "  pudo  ser  tambien  que  se  hallase  Crist(5bal  Colon." 
Now  Christopher  certaiiJy  did  not  go  on  that  voyage.  The  expe- 
dition started  in  August,  1480,  and  returned  to  Lisbon  in  Decem- 
ber, 1487,  after  an  absence  of  sixteen  months  and  seventeen  days, 
"auendo  dezaseis  meses  et  dezasete  dias  que  erSo  partidos  delle." 
(Barros,  Decada  priineira  da  Asia,  Lisbon,  1752,  tom.  i.  fol.  42, 
44.)  The  account-book  of  the  treasury  of  Castile  shows  that  sums 
of  money  were  paid  to  Christopher  at  Seville,  May  5,  July  3, 
August  27,  and  October  15,  1487  ;  so  that  he  could  not  have  gone 
with  Dias  (see  Harrisse,  torn.  ii.  p.  191).  Neither  could  Chris-, 
topher  have  been  in  Lisbon  in  December,  1487,  when  the  little 
fleet  returned,  for  his  safe-conduct  from  King  John  is  dated 
March  20,  1488.  It  was  not  until  the  autumn  of  1488  that  Co- 
lumbus made  this  visit  to  Portugal,  and  M.  d'Avezac  has  got  the 
return  of  the  fleet  a  year  too  late.  Bartholomew's  note  followed 
a  custom  which  made,  1488  begin  at  Chriatmas,  1487. 

In  reading  a  later  chapter  of  Las  Casas  for  another  purpose 
(tom.  i.  p.  227),  I  come  again  upon  this  point.  He  rightly  con- 
cludes that  Christopher  could  not  have  gone  with  Dias,  and 
again  declares  most  positively  that  the  handwriting  of  the  note 
was  Bartholomew's  and  not  Christopher's. 

This  footnote  affords  a  good  illustration  of  the  kind  of  diffi- 
culties that  surround  such  a  subject  iis  the  life  of  Columbus,  and 
the  ease  with  which  an  excess  of  ingenuity  may  discover  mare's 
nests. 


■!i 


I 


<« 


i 


404 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


after  Bartholomew's  return  that  Christopher  de. 
terinined  to  go  and  see  him,  for  he  applied  to  King 
John  II.  for  a  kind  of  safe-conduct,  which  was 
duly  granted  March  20,  1488.  This  document  i 
guarantees  Christopher  against  arrest  or  arraign- 
ment or  detention  on  any  charge  civil  or  criminal 
whatever,  during  his  stay  in  Portugal,  and  com- 
mands all  magistrates  in  that  kingdom  to  respect 
it.  From  this  it  would  seem  probable  that  in  the 
eagerness  of  his  geographical  speculations  he  had 
neglected  his 'business  affairs  and  left  debts  behind 
him  in  Portugal  for  which  he  was  liable  to  be 
arrested.  The  king's  readiness  to  grant 
the  desired  privilege  seems  to  indicate 
that  he  may  have  cherished  a  hope  of 
regaining  the  services  of  this  accom- 
plished chart-maker  and  mariner.  Christopher  did 
not  avail  himself  of  the  privilege  until  late  in  the 
summer,^  and  it  is  only  fair  to  suppose  that  he 
waited  for  the  birth  of  his  child  and  some  assur- 
ance of  its  mother's  safety.  On  meeting  Barthol- 
omew he  evidently  set  him  to  work  forthwith  in 
and  sends  him  making  ovcrturcs  to  the  courts  of  Eng- 
to  England.  jj^^j  ^ud  Fraucc.  It  was  natural 
enough  that  Bartholomew  should  first  set  out  for 
Bristol,  where  old  shipmates  and  acquaintances 
were  sure  to  be  found.  It  appears  that  on  the 
way  he  was  captured  by  pirates,  and  thus  some 
delay  was  occasioned  before  he  arrived  in  London 


Cliristopher 
visitH  Barthol- 
omew lit  Lis- 
bon, cir.  Sept., 
1488; 


^  It  may  be  found  in  Navarrete,  Coleccion  de  viages,  torn.  ii.  pp. 
5,  0. 

'^  Tlio  account-book  of  the  treasury  shows  that  on  June  16  he 
\ras  still  in  Spain.    See  Harrisse,  torn.  i.  p.  355. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


405 


and  showed  the  king  a  map,    probably  similar  to 
Toscanelli's  and  embellished  with  quaint 

_.        .  .  ,  ,  Bartholomew, 

Latin  verses.     An    entry  on  this    map  titter  imsimpa, 
informs  us    that   it  was  made  by  Bar-  latxi  tir.  Feb., 

14iK)  • 

tholomew  Columbus  in  London,  Febru- 
ary 10,  1488,  which  I  think  should  be  read  1489 
or  even  1490,  so  we  may  suppose  it  to  have  been 
about  that  time  or  perhaps  later  that  he  approached 
the  throne.^     Henry  VII.  was  intelligent  enough 

1  The  entry,  as  given  by  Las  Casas,  is  "  Pro  authore,  sen  pic- 
tore,  II  Gennua  cui  patria  est,  nonien  cui  Bartulomeus  ||  Columbus 
de  terra  rubea,  opus  edidit  istud  ||  Londonijj :  anno  domini  mil- 
lesimo  quatercentessimo  octiesque  uno  ||  Atque  insuper  anno 
octavo  :  deeimaque  die  mensis  Februarii.  jj  Laudes  Christo  can- 
tentur  abunde."  Ilistoria,  torn.  i.  p.  225.  Now  since  Bartholo- 
mew Columbus  was  a  fairly  educated  man,  writing  this  note  in 
England  on  a  map  made  for  the  eyes  of  the  king  of  England,  I 
suppose  he  used  the  old  English  style  which  made  the  year  begin 
at  the  vernal  equinox  instead  of  Christmas,  so  that  his  February, 
14S8,  means  the  next  month  but  one  after  December,  1488,  i  e. 
what  in  our  new  style  becomes  February,  148'.).  Bartholomew  r«- 
turned  to  Lisbon  from  Africa  in  the  last  week  of  December,  1487, 
and  it  is  not  likely  that  his  plans  could  have  been  matured  and 
himself  settled  down  in  London  in  less  than  seven  weeks.  The 
logical  relation  of  the  events,  too,  shows  plainly  that  Christopher's 
visit  to  Lisbon  was  for  the  purpose  of  consulting  his  brother  and 
getting  first-hand  information  about  the  greatest  voyage  the  world 
had  ever  seen.  In  the  early  weeks  of  1488  Christoiiher  sends  his 
request  for  a  safe-conduct,  gets  it  March  20,  waits  till  his  child 
is  born,  August  15,  and  then  presently  goes.  Bartholomew  may 
have  sailed  by  the  first  of  October  for  England,  where  (according 
to  this  reading  of  his  date)  we  actually  find  him  four  months 
later.  What  happened  to  him  in  this  interval  ?  Here  we  come 
to  the  story  of  the  i)irates.  M.  Ilarrisse,  who  never  loses  an  op- 
portunity for  throwing  discredit  upon  the  Vita  deW  Ainmiraglio, 
lias  failed  to  make  the  correction  of  date  whicli  I  have  here  sug- 
gested. He  puts  Bartholomew  in  London  in  February,  1488,  and  is 
thus  unable  to  assign  any  reason  for  Christopher's  visit  to  Lisbon. 
He  also  finds  that  in  the  forty-six  days  between  Christmas,  1487, 
And  February,  10, 1488,  there  is  hardly  room  enough  for  any  delay 


11  ■ 


H 


i 


if 


406 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


to  see  the  bearings  of  Bartholomew's  arf^iimentS^ 
and  at  the  same  time,  as  a  good  man  of  business, 

due  to  80  grave  a  cause  as  capture  by  pirates.    {Christophe  Colomb, 
vol.  ii.  p.  IJIU.)     Ho  therefore  conchidoH  that  the  stateujent  in  the 
Vita  delV  Ammiraylio,  cup.  xi.,i8  unworthy  of  credit,  and  it  is 
upon  an  accunudation  of  small  difliculties  like  this  that  he  basen 
Ills  opinion  that   Ferdinand  Columbus   cannot  have  written  that 
l)ook.     But  Las  Ciis^is  also  gives  the  story  of  the  pirates,  and  adds 
the  information  that  they  were  "  Easterlings,"  thouyh  he  cannot 
say   of  what   nation,   i.  e.    whether  Dutch,  Gennan,   or  perhaps 
Danes.     He  says  that  Bartholomew  was  stripped  of  his  money  and 
fell  sick,  and  after  his  recovery  was  obliged  to  earn  money  by 
map-making  before  he  could   get  to  England.     {IJistoria,  torn.  i. 
p.  225.)     Could  all  this  have  happened  within  the  four  months 
which  1  have  allowed  between  October,  1488,  and  February,  1481)  ? 
Voyages  before  the  invention  of  steamboats  were  of  very  uncer- 
tain duration.     John  Adams  in  1784  was  fifty-four  flays  in  getting 
from   London  to  Amsterdam  (see  my  Critical  Period  of  A/neri' 
can  History,  p.  lod).     But  with  favourable  weather  a  Portuguese 
caravel  iu  1488  ought  to  have  run  from  Lisbon  to  Bristol  in  four- 
teen days  or  less,  so  that  in  four  months   there  would  be  time 
enough  for  quite  a  chapter  of  accidents.     Las  Casas,  however, 
says  it  was  a  long  time  before  Bartholomew  was  able  to  reach 
England  :  —  "  Esto  f  u^  causa  que  enfermase  y  viniese  d  mucha 
pobreza,  y  estuviese  mucho  tempo  sin  poder  Uegar  d  Inglaterra, 
hasta  tanto  que  quiso  Dios  sanarle  ;  y  reformado  algo,   por  su 
industria  y  trabajos  de  sus  manos,  ha<;iendo  cartas  de   marear, 
lleg6  d  Inglaterra,  y,  pasados  un  dia  y  otros,  hobo  de  aleanzar 
que  le  oyese  Enrique  VH."     It  is  impossible,  I  think,  to  read  this 
pjissage  without  feeling  that  at  least  a  year  must  have  been  con- 
sumed ;  and  I  do  not  think  we  are  entitled  to  disregard  the  words 
of  Las  Casas  in  such  a  matter.     But  how  shall  we  get  the  time  ? 
Is  .'t  possible  that  Las  Casas  made  a  slight  mistake  in  decipher- 
ing the  date  on  Bartholomew's  map  ?     Either  that  mariner  did 
not  give  the  map  to  Henry  VII.,  or   the  king  gave  it  back,  or 
more  likely  it  was  made  in  duplicate.     At  any  rate  Las  Casas  had 
it,  along  with  his  many  other  Columbus  documents,  and  for  aught 
wc  know  it  may  still  be  tumbling  about  somewhere  in  the  Spanish 
archives.     It  wiis  so  badly  written  {de  muy  mala  d  corrupta  letra), 
apparently  in  abbreviations  {sin  ortogrnfia),  that  Las  Casas  says 
he  found  extreme  difliculty  in  making  it  out.     Now  let  us  observe 
that  date,  which  is  given  in  fantastic  style,  appai'ently  because  tha 


>%     •«C^~*.tA-  Ai>»  *,«.,>' 


rilE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


40T 


a- 


?. 
f 


and  (^oeii 
thence  to 
li'rnnce  befora 


he  was  likely  to  he  cautious  about  investing  money 
in  remote  or  doubtful  enterprises.  What  argu- 
ments were  used  we  do  not  know,  but  the  spring  of 
1492  had  arrived  before  anv  decisive 
answer  had  been  given.  Meanwhile 
Bartholomew  had  made  his  way  to 
France,  and  found  a  powerful  protector  in  a  cer- 
tain Madame  de  Bourbon,^  while  he  made  maps  for 

inscription  ia  in  a  rude  do{jgerel,  and  the  writer  seems  to  have 
•wished  to  keep  liis  "  veraes  "  tolerably  even.  (They  don't  scan 
much  better  than  Walt  Whitman's.)  As  it  stands,  the  date  reada 
anno  domini  millesimo  quatercentessimo  octieaqne  uno  atque  insiiper 
anno  octavo,  i.  e.  "  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  the  thousandth,  four 
hundredth,  and  kight-times-one,  and  thereafter  the  eighth 
year."  What  business  has  this  cardinal  nimiber  octiesque  uno  in 
a  row  of  ordinals  ?  If  it  were  translatable,  which  it  is  not,  it 
would  g-ive  us  l,()Of)  +  400  +  8  -f  8  =  141(1,  an  absurd  date.  The 
most  obvious  way  to  make  the  passage  readable  is  to  insert  the 
ordinal  octotjei^imo  priino  instead  of  the  incongruous  octiesque  uno ; 
then  it  w  ill  read  "  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  the  one-thousand-four- 
hundred-and-eighty-lii'st,  and  thereafter  the  eighth  year,"  that  is 
to  say  1489.  Now  translate  old  style  into  new  style,  and  February, 
1481),  becomes  February,  14i)0,  which  I  believe  to  be  the  correct 
date.  This  allows  sixteen  months  for  Bartholomew's  mishaps; 
it  justifies  the  statement  in  which  Las  Casas  confimis  Ferdinand 
Columbus ;  and  it  harmonizes  with  the  statement  of  Lord  Bacon : 
"  For  Christopherus  Columbus,  refused  by  the  king  of  Portugal 
(who  would  not  embrace  at  once  both  east  and  west),  employed 
his  brother  Bartholomew  Columbus  unto  King  Henry  to  negotiate 
for  his  discovery.  And  it  so  fortuned  that  he  was  taken  by 
pirates  at  sea ;  by  which  accidental  impediment  he  was  long  ere 
he  came  to  the  king  ;  so  long  that  before  he  haa  obtained  a  ca- 
pitulation with  the  king  for  his  brother  the  enterprise  was  achieved, 
and  so  the  West  Lidies  by  Providence  were  then  reserved  for  the 
crown  of  Castilia."  Ilistorie  of  the  liaygne  of  K.  Uenry  the  Seventh, 
Bacoa's  Works,  Boston,  1860,  vol.  xi.  p.  290.  Lord  Bacon  may 
have  taken  the  statement  from  Ferdinand's  biography;  but  it 
probably  agreed  with  English  traditions,  and  ought  not  to  be 
Blighted  in  this  connection. 

^  One  of  the  sisters  of  Charle»  VIII.     See  Harrisse,  torn.  ii. 
p.  194. 


(H 


* 


408 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


people  at  the  court  and  waited  to  see  if  there  were 
any  chances  of  getting  help  from  Charles  VIII. 

As  for  Christopher  Columbus,  we  find  him  back 
in  Spain  3gain,  in  May,  1489,  attending  court  at 
Cordova.    In  the  following  autumn  there  was  much 
suffering  in  Spain  from  floods  and  famine,^  and 
the  sovereigns  were  too  busy  with  the  Moorish  war 
to  give  ear  to  Columbus.     It  was  no  timj  for  new- 
undertakings,  and  the  weary  suitor  began  to  think 
seriously  of  going  in  person  to  the  French  court. 
First,  however,  he  thought  it  worth  while  to  make 
an  attempt  to  get  private  capital  enlisted  in  his 
enterprise,  and  in  the  Spain  of  that  day  such  pri- 
vate capital  meant  a  largess  from  some  wealthy 
grandee.     Accordingly  about  Christmas  of  1489, 
after  the  Beza  campaign  in  which  Columbus  is  said 
to  have  fought  with  distinguished  valour,^  he  seems 
to  have  applied  to  the  most  powerful  nobleman  in 
Spain,  the  Duke  of  Medina-Sidonia,  but  without 
success.     But  at  the  hands  of  Luis  de  la  Cerda, 
Duke  of  Medina-Celi,  he  met  with  more 
encouragement  than  he  had    -  yet  found 
in  any  quarter.     That  nobleman  enter- 
tained Columbus  most  hospitably  at  his 
castle  at  Puerto  de  Santa  Maria  for  nearly  two 
years,  until  the  autumr  of  1491.     He  became  con- 
vinced that  the   scheme  of  l^olumbus  was  feasi- 
ble, and  decided  to  fit  up  twc  or  three  caravels 
at  his   own   expense,   if    necessary,    but   first   he 
thought  it  proper  to  ask  the  queen's  consent,  and 
to  offer  her  another  chance  to  take  part  in  the 

i  P^rnaldez,  Ryes  Catdli'cos,  cap.  xci. 

3  Zuiliga,  Anales  de  Sevilla,  lib.  xii.  p.  404. 


The  Duke  of 

Medina-Celi 
proposes  to 
furnish  tlie 
Bliips  for 
Columbus, 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


409 


enterprise.^  Isabella  was  probably  unwilling  to 
have  the  duke  come  in  for  a  lar^e  share  of  the 
j)rofits  in  case  the  venture  should  prove  successfid. 
She  refused  the    royal   license,   saving 

''    .  IT  but  Isabella 

that   she    had    not  quite  made  up   her  withholds  her 
mind  whether  to  take  up  the  affair  or 
not,  but  if  she  should  decide  to  do  so  she  would  be 
glad  to  have  the  duke  take  part  in  it.^     Meanwhile 
she  referred  the  question  to  Alonso  de  Quintanilla, 
comptroller  of  the  treasury  of  Castile.     This  was 
in  the  spring  of  1491,  when  the  whole  country  was 
in  a  buzz  of  excitement  with  the  preparations  for 
the    siege    of    Granada.     The    baffled    Columbus 
visited  the  sovereigns  in  camp,  but  could  not  get 
them  to  attend  to  him,  and  early  in  the  autdmn, 
thoroughly  disgusted  and  sick  at  heart, 
he  m  ide  up  his  mind  to  shake  the  dust  makes  up  his 
of  Castile   f ro.n  his  feet  and  see  what   his  family  to- 
could  be  done  in  France.     In  October  to  France,  ^° 
or  November   he  went  to  Huelva,  ap- 
parently to  get  his  son  Diego,  who  had  been  left 
there,  in  charge  of  his  aunt.     It  was  probably  his 
intention  to  take  all  the  family  he  had  —  Beatriz 


■ii'i 


1  See  the  letter  of  March  19,  1403,  from  the  Duke  of  Medina- 
Cell  to  the  Grand  Cardinal  of  Spain  (from  the  archives  of  Si- 
mancas)  in  Navarrete  Colecdon  de  tinges,  torn.  ii.  p.  20. 

^  This  promise  was  never  fulfilled.  When  Columbus  returned 
in  triumph,  .arriving  March  0,  hWi,  at  Lisbon,  and  March  15  at 
Palo.'  .he  Duke  of  Medina-Celi  wrote  the  letter  just  cited,  re- 
calling the  queen's  promise  find  a.sking  to  bo  allowed  to  send  to 
the  Indies  once  each  ye.ar  an  expedition  on  his  own  account ;  for, 
he  says,  if  he  had  not  kept  Columbus  with  him  in  1490  and  1491 
he  would  have  gone  to  Fr  .nee,  iud  Castile  would  have  lost  the 
prize.  There  was  some  <^orce  in  this,  but  Isabell"  does  not  appear 
to  have  heeded  the  request. 


410 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


and  her  infant  son  Ferdinand,  of  whom  he  was  ex- 
tremely fond,  as  well  as  Diego  —  and  find  a  new 
home  in  either  France  or  England,  besides  ascer- 
taining what  had  become  of  his  brother  Bartholo- 
mew, from  whom  he  had  not  heard  a  word  since 
the  latter  left  Portugal  for  England.^ 

But  now  at  length  events  took  a  favourable  turn. 
Fate  had  grown  tired  of  fighting  against  such  in- 
domitable perseverance.  For  some  years  now  the 
stately  figure  of  Columbus  had  been  a  familiar 
sight  in  the  streets  of  Seville  and  Cordova,  and  as 
he  passed  along,  with  his  white  hair  streaming  in 
the  breeze,  and  countenance  aglow  with  intensity 
of  purpose  or  haggard  with  disappointment  at 
some  fresh  rebuff,  the  ragged  urchins  of  the  pave- 
ment tapped  their  foreheads  and  smiled  with  min- 
gled wonder  and  amusement  at  this  madman. 
Seventeen  years  had  elapsed  since  the  letter  from 
Toscanelli  to  Martinez,  and  all  that  was  mortal  of 
the  Florentine  astronomer  had  long  since  been 
laid  in  the  grave.  For  Columbus  himself  old  age 
was  not  far  away,  yet  he  seemed  no  nearer  the  lal- 
filment  of  his  grand  purpose  than  when  he  had 
first  set  it  forth  to  the  king  of  Portugal.  We  can 
well  imagine  that  when  he  started  from  Huelva, 
with  his  little  son  Diego,  now  some  eleven  or 
twelve  years  old,  again  to  begin  renewing  Lis  suit 
in  a  strange  country,  his  thoughts  must  have  been 
sombre  enough.  For  some  reason  or  other  —  tra- 
dition says  to  ask  for  some  bread  and  water  for 
his  boy  —  he  stopped  at  the  Franciscan  monastery 

^  This  theory  of  the  situation  is  fully  sustaiued  by  Las  Casas, 
torn.  i.  p.  241. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


41] 


of  La  Rabida,  about  half  a  league   from   Pales. 
The  prior,  Juan  Perez,  who  had  never 

r^    t         1  t      n  1  ,1        He  stops  at  La 

seen  Columbus   beiore,  became  greatly  Rabida,  and 

mppts  til  ft 

interested  in  him  and  listened  with  ear-  prior  juan 
nest  attention  to  his  story.  This  wor- 
thy monk,  who  before  1478  had  been  Isabella's 
father-confessor,  had  a  mind  hospitable  to  new 
ideas.  He  sent  for  Garcia  Fernandez,  a  physician 
of  Palos,  who  was  somewhat  versed  in  cosmography, 
and  for  Martin  Alonso  Pinzon,  a  well-to-do  ship- 
owner and  trained  mariner  of  that  town,  and  in 
the  quiet  of  the  monastery  a  conference  was  held 
in  which  Columbus  carried  conviction  to  the  minds 
of  these  new  friends.  Pinzon  declared  himself 
ready  to  embark  in  the  enterprise  in  person.  The 
venerable  prior  forthwith  sent  a  letter  to  ^^^^^  ^j^^^ 
t;he  queen,  and  received  a  very  prompt  *° "'®  ^^^^^' 
reply  summoning  him  to  attend  her  in  the  camp 
before  Granada.  The  result  of  the  interview  was 
that  within  a  few  days  Perez  returned  to  the  con- 
vent with  a  purse  of  20,000  maravedis  (equivalent 
to  about  1,180  dollars  of  the  present  day),  out  of 
which  Columbus  bought  a  new  suit  of  clothes  and 
a  mule  ;  and  about  the  first  of  Decem- 

and  Columbus 

ber  he  set  out  for  the  camp  in  company  i-  summoned 

.  t  ^.      "^     back  to  court. 

With  Juan  Perez,  leaving  the  boy  Diego 
in  charge  of  the  })riest  Martin  Sanchez  and  a  cer- 
tain Rodriguez  Cabejudo,  upon  whose  sworn  testi- 
mony, together  with  that  of  the  physician  Garcia 
Fernandez,  some  years  afterward,  several  of  these 
facts  are  related.^ 

^  My  account  of  these  proceedings  at  La  RAbida  differs  in  some 
particulafs  from  any  heretofore  given,  and  x  thiuk  gets  the  events 


412  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

At  once  upon  the  arrival  of  Columbus  in  the 
camp  before  Granada,  his  case  was  argued  then 

into  an  order  of  sequence  that  is  at  once  more  logical  and  more 
in  harmony  with  the  sources  of  information  t-an  any  other.  The 
error  of  Ferdinand  Columbus  —  a  very  easy  one  to  commit,  and 
not  in  the  least  damaging  to  his  general  character  as  biographer 
—  lay  in  confusing  his  father's  two  real  visits  (in  1484  and  1491) 
to  Huelva  with  two  visits  (one  imaginary  in  1484  and  one  real  in 
1491)  to  La  Rflbida,  which  was  close  by,  between  Huelva  and 
Palos.  The  visits  were  all  the  more  likely  to  get  mixed  up  in 
recollection  because  in  each  case  their  object  was  little  Diego  and 
in  each  case  he  was  left  in  charge  of  somebody  in  that  neighbour- 
hood. The  confusion  has  been  helped  by  another  for  which  Fer- 
dinand is  not  responsible,  viz. :  the  friar  Juan  Perez  has  been  con- 
founded witli  another  friar  Antonio  de  Marchena,  who  Columbus 
says  was  the  only  peraon  wlio  from  the  time  of  his  first  arrival  in 
Spain  had  always  befriended  him  and  never  mocked  at  him. 
These  worthy  friars  twain  have  been  made  into  one  (e.  g.  "the 
prior  of  the  convent,  Juan  Perez  de  Marchena,"  Irving's  Colum- 
bus, vol.  i.  p.  128),  and  it  has  often  been  supposed  that  Marchena's 
acquaintance  began  with  Columbus  i^t  La  Rilbida  in  1484,  and 
tliat  Diego  was  left  at  the  convent  at  that  time.  But  some  mod- 
ern sources  of  information  have  served  at  first  to  bemuddle,  and 
then  when  more  carefully  sifted,  to  clear  up  the  story.     In  1508  '. 

Diego  Columbus  brought  suit  against  the  Spanish  crown  to  vindi- 
cate  his  claim  to  certain  territories  discovered  by  his  father,  and 
there  was  a  long  investigation  in  which  many  witnesses  were  sum- 
moned and  past  events  were  busily  raked  over  the  coals.  Among 
these  witnesses  were  Rodriguez  Cabejudo  and  the  physician  Gar- 
cia Fernandez,  who  gave  from  personal  recollection  a  very  lucid 
account  of  the  affairs  at  La  RAbida.  These  proceedings  are 
printed  in  Navarrete,  Coleccion  de  viages,  tom.  iii.  pp.  238-591. 
More  recently  the  publication  of  the  great  book  of  Las  Casas  has 
furnished  some  very  significant  clues,  and  tlie  elaborate  researches 
of  M.  Harrisse  have  furnished  others.  (See  Las  Casas,  lib.  i.  cap. 
xxix.,  xxxi. ;  Harrisse,  tom.  i.  pp.  341—372 ;  tom.  ii.  pp.  287-231 ;  l 

cf.  Peragallo,  L'  autenticitd,,  etc.,  pp.  117-134.)  —  It  now  seems 
clear  that  Marchena,  whom  Columbus  knew  from  his  first  arrival 
in  Spain,  was  not  associated  with  La  R.ibida.  At  that  time  Co- 
lumbus  left  Diego,  a  mere  infant,  with  his  wife's  sister  at  Huelva. 
Seven  years  later,  intending  to  leave  Spain  forever,  he  went  to 
Huelva  and  took  Diego,  then  a  small  boy.     On  his  way  from 


THE  SEAIlCn  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


413 


I 


9 


\ 


and  there  before  an  assembly  of  learned  men  and 

was  received  more  hospitably  than  for- 

merly,  at  fealamanca.     feeveral  emment  fore  Granada, 

Dec.   1491. 

prelates  had  come  to  think  favourably 
of  his  project  or  to  deem  it  at  least  worth  a  trial. 
Among  these  were  the  royal  confessors,  Deza  and 
Talavera,  the  latter  ha\ang  changed  his  mind,  and 
especially  Mendoza,  archbishop  of  Toledo,  who 
now  threw  his  vast  influence  decisively  in  favour  of 
Columbus.^  The  treasurers  of  the  two  kingdoms, 
moreover,  QuintaniUa  for  Castile  and  Luis  de  San- 
tangel  for  Aragon,  were  among  his  most  enthusi- 
astic supporters ;  and  the  residt  of  the  conference 
vas  the  queen's  promise  to  take  up  the  matter  in 
earnest  as  soon  as  the  Moor  shoidd  have  surren- 
dered Grenada. 

Huelva  to  the  Seville  road,  and  thence  to  Cordova  (where  he 
would  have  been  joined  by  lieatriz  and  Ferdinand) ,  he  happened 
to  pass  by  La  Rdbida,  Avhere  up  to  that  time  he  was  evidently  un- 
known, ana  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  prior  Juan  Perez,  and 
the  wheel  of  fortune  suddenly  and  unexpectedly  turned.  As 
Columbus's  next  .start  was  not  for  France,  but  for  Granada,  his 
boy  was  left  in  charge  of  two  trustworthy  persoits.  On  May  8, 
1492,  the  little  Diego  was  appointed  page  to  Don  John,  heir- 
apparent  to  the  tlirones  of  Castile  and  Aragon,  with  a  stipend  of 
9,400  maravedis.  On  February  19,  1498,  after  the  death  of  that, 
^oung  prince,  Diego  became  page  to  Queon  Isabella. 

^  In  popular  allusions  to  Columbus  it  is  quite  common  to  as- 
sume or  imply  that  he  encountered  nothing  but  ojjposition  from 
the  clergy.  For  example  the  account  in  Draper's  Conflict  between 
Science  and  Religion,  p.  101,  can  hardly  be  otherwise  undei-stood 
by  the  reader.  But  observ^  that  Marcliena  who  never  mocked  at 
Columbus,  Juan  Perez  who  gave  the  favourable  tuni  to  his  affairs, 
the  great  prelates  Deza  and  Mendoza,  and  the  tw  o  treasurers  San- 
tongel  and  QuintaniUa,  were  every  one  of  them  priests  1  With- 
out cordial  support  from  the  clergy  no  such  enterjirise  as  that  of 
Columbus  could  have  been  undertaken,  in  Spain  at  least.  *It  is 
quite  right  that  we  should  be  free-thinkers ;  and  it  is  also  desini~ 
ble  that  we  should  have  some  respect  for  facts. 


TT 


? 


414  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

Columbus  had  not  long  to  wait  for  that  great 
event,  which  came  on  the  2d  of  January,  1492, 

Surrender  of      "^""^  '""^^  ^^^^^^  '^^^^    TCJoicingS  thrOUgh- 

orarmda.jan.    out  Europe  as  in  somc  sort  a  compensar  f 

tion  for  the  loss  of  Constantinople.  It 
must  have  been  with  a  manifold  sense  of  triumph 
that  Columbus  saw  the  banner  of  Spain  unfurled 
to  the  breeze  from  the  highest  tower  of  the  Alham-  f 

bra.     But  at  this  critical  moment  in  his  fortunes 
the  same  obstacle  was  encountered  that  long  be- 
fore had  broken  off  his  negotiations  with  the  kino- 
of  Portugal.     With  pride  and  self-confidence  not 
an  inch  abated  by  all  these  years  of  trial,  he  de- 
manded such  honours  and  substantial  rewards  as 
seemed  extravagant  to  the   queen,  and  Talavera 
advised  her  not  to  grant  them.    Columbus  insisted 
upon  being  appointed  admiral  of  the  ocean  and 
viceroy  of    such  heathen  countries  as   he   miirht 
Columbus  ne-    ^i^covcr,  bcsidcs  having  for  his  own  use 
the'quee?''     ^°^^  bchoof  ouc  eighth  part  of  such  rev- 
enues and  profits  as  might  accrue  from 
the  expedition.     In  principle  this  sort  of  remuner- 
ation did  not  differ  from  that  which  the  crown  of 
Portugal  had  been  wont  to  award  to  its  eminent 
discoverers  ;  ^  but  in  amount  it  was  liable  to  prove 

1  Our  Scandinavian  friends  are  fond  of  pointing  to  this  demand 
of  Columbus  as  an  indication  that  he  secretly  expected  to  "  dis- 
cover America,"  and  not  merely  to  find  the  way  to  Asia.  But 
how  about  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  who  finally  granted  what  was 
demanded,  and  their  ministers  who  drew  up  the  agreement,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  clerks  who  engrossed  it  ?  What  did  they  all  ' 
understand  by  "  discovering  islands  and  continents  in  the  ocean  "  ? 
Were  they  all  in  this  precious  Vinland  secret  ?  If  so,  it  was 
pretty  well  kept.  But  in  truth  there  was  nothing  singular  in 
these  stipulations.     Portugal  paid  for  discovery  in  just  this  way 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES.  415 

indefinitely  great,  enough  perhaps  to  raise  to 
princely  power  and  rank  this  foreign  adventurer. 
Could  he  not  be  satisfied  with  something  less? 
But  Columbus  was  as  inexorable  as  the  Sibyl  with 
her  books,  and  would  hear  of  no  abatement  in  his 
price.  For  this  "  great  constancy  and  loftiness  of 
soul,"  ^  Las  Casas  warmly  commends  his  friend 
Columbus.  A  querulous  critic  might  call  it  un- 
reasonable obstinacy.  But  in  truth  the  good  man 
seems  to  liave  entertained  another  grand  scheme  of 
his  own,  to  which  he  wished  to  make  his  maritime 
venture  contribute.  It  was  natural  that  his  feel- 
ings toward  Turks  should  have  been  no  more  ami- 
able than  those  of  Hannibal  toward  the  Romans. 
It  was  the  Turks  who  had  ruined  the  commerce  of 
his  native  Genoa,  in  his  youth  he  had  more  than 
once  crossed  swords  with  their  corsairs,  and  now 
he  looked  forward  to  the  time  when  he  might  play 
the  part  of  a  second  Godfrey  de  Bouillon  and  de- 
t  liver  Jerusalem  from  the   miscreant  followers  of  [ 

Mahound.'^     Vast  resources  woidd  be  needed  for  | 

by  granting  governorships  over  islands  like  the  Azores,  or  long 

stretches  of  continent  like  Gninea,   along  with  a  share  of   the 

revenues  yielded  by  such  places.     See  for  example  the  cases  of 

Gonzjilo  Cabral,  Fernando  Gomez,  and  others  in  Major,  Prince  I 

Henry   the  Navigator,   pp.    2;]8,  321,   and   elsewhere.      In  their  1 

search  for  the  Indies  the  Portuguese  wei'e  continually  finding  new 

lands,  and  it  was  likely  to  be  tlie  same  with  the  western  route, 

which  was  supposed  (see.Catalan,  Toscanelli,  and  Behaim  maps)  i} 

to  lead  among  spice  islands  innumerable,  and  to  Asiatic  kingdoms 

who.se  heathen  people  had  no  rights  of  sovereignty  that  Christian  | 

nionarchs  felt  bound  to  respect.  j 

^  Las  Casas,  o/>.C(V.  torn  i.  p.  24;'.  j,. 

2  See  his  letter  of  February,  1502,  to  Pope  Alexander  VI.  in  1 

Navarrete,  torn.  ii.  p.  280 ;  and  cf.  Helps.  Spanish  Conquest  in  j 

America,  vol.  i.  p.   90;   Roselly  de  Lorgues,  Christophc  Colombo  \ 

p.  394.  i 

i 


I 


416  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

such  work,  and  from  Cipango  with  its  gold-roofed 
temples,  and  the  nameless  and  numberless  isles  of 
spices  that  crowded  the  Cathayan  seas,  he  hoped 
to  obtain  them.  Long  brooding  over  his  cherished 
projects,  in  which  chimeras  were  thus  mixed  with 
anticipations  of  scientific  truth,  had  imparted  to 
liis  character  a  tinge  of  religious  fanaticism.  He 
had  come  to  regard  hiuAself  as  a  man  with  a  mis- 
sion to  fulfil,  as  God's   chosen  instru- 

Hii  terms  are  .    r  i  •  ,       , 

considered        mcut  tor  culargmg  the  bounds  of  Chris- 

exorbitaut.  .  i        i 

tendom  and  achieving  triumphs  of  untold 
magnificence  for  its  banners.  In  this  mood  he  was 
apt  to  address  kings  with  an  air  of  equaUty  that 
ill  comported  with  his  humble  origin  and  slender 
means  ;  and  on  the  present  occasion,  if  Talavera 
felt  his  old  doubts  and  suspicions  reviving,  and  was 
more  than  half  inclined  to  set  Columbus  down  as 
a  mere  vendor  of  crotchets,  one  can  hardly  wonder. 
The  negotiations  were  broken  off,  and  the  in- 
domitable enthusiast  once  more  prepared  to  go  to 
France.  He  had  actually  started  on  his  mule  one 
fine  winter  day,  when  Luis  de  Santangel  rushed 
Interposition  "^*°  *^^^  quccn's  room  and  spoke  to  her 
sLungeL  ^^*^^  ^^^  ^^^^  passionatc  and  somewhat 
reproachful  energy  of  one  who  felt  that 
a  golden  opportunity  was  slipping  away  forever. 
His  arguments  were  warmly  seconded  by  Quinta- 
nilla,  who  had  followed  him  into  the  room,  as  well 
as  by  the  queen's  bosom  friend  Beatriz  de  Boba- 
dilla.  Marchioness  of  Moya,  who  happened  to  be 
sitting  on  the  sofa  and  was  a  devoted  admirer  of 
Columbus.  An  impulse  seized  Isabella.  A  cou- 
rier was  sent  on  a  fieet  horse,  and  overtook  Colum- 


I).  > 


III 


J, 

111  ■. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES.  417 

bus  as  he  was  jogging  quietly  over  the  bridge  of 
Pinos,  about  six  miles   out  from    Granada.     The 
matter  was  reconsidered  and  an  arrangement  was 
,  soon  made.     It  was  agreed :  —  J 

'<f  "1.  That    Columbus  sliould  have,  for  himself,  !• 

during  his  life,  and  for  his  heirs   and  successors 
forever,  the  office  of  admiral  in  all  the  Agreement  be- 
;  islands  and  continents  which  he  might  busand tliT"  *: 

fl  discover  or    acquire  in  the  ocean,  with  «o^'^'''^'t'"»- 

similar  honours  and  prerogatives  to  those  enjoyed  IJ 

by  the  high  admiral  of  Castile  in  his  district.  if 

"  2.  That    he  should  be  viceroy  and  governor-  l|; 

i  general   over  all   the  said    lands  and  continents ; 

,'■{  with  the  privilege  of  nominating  three  candidates 

for  the  government  of  each  island  or  province,  one 
of  whom  should  be  selected  by  the  sovereigns. 

"  3.  That  he  should  be  entitled  to  reserve  for  him- 
self one  tenth  of  all  pearls,  precious  stones,  gold, 
silver,  spices,  and  all  other  articles  and  merchan- 
dises, in  whatever  manner  found,  bought,  bartered, 
j\  or   gained   within   his  admiralty,  the  costs  being 

first  deducted. 

"  4.  That  he,  or  his  lieutenant,  should  be  the 
sole  judge  in  all  causes  and  disputes  arising  out  of 
traffic  between  those  countries  and  Si)am,  provided 
the  high  admiral  of  Castile  had  similar  jurisdic- 
tion in  his  district. 

''  5.  That  he  might  then,  and  at  all  after  times, 
contribute  an  eighth  j)art  of  the  expense  in  fitting 
out  vessels  to  sail  on  this  enterprise,  and  .'eceive 
an  eighth  part  of  the  profits.  "  ^ 

^  I  cite  this  version  from  Irvinfi;''s  Columbus,  vol.  i.  p.  142,  mak- 
ing a  slight  amendment  in  the  rendering  ;  the  original  text  is  in 


418  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

Columbua  was  not  long  in  finding  friends  to 
advance  or  promise  on  his  account  an  eighth  part 
of  the  sum  immediately  required.  A  considerable 
amount  was  assessed  upoii  the  town  of  Palos  in 
punishment  for  certain  misdeeds  or  delinquencies 
on  the  part  of  its  people  or  some  of  them.  Castile 
assumed  the  rest  of  the  burden,  though  Santangel 
may  have  advanced  a  million  maravedis  out  of  the 
treasury  of  Aragon,  or  out  of  the  funds  of  the  Her" 
mandad,^  or  perhaps  more  likely  on  his  own  ac- 
count.2  In  any  case  it  was  a  loan  to  the  treasury 
of  Castile  simply.     It  was  always  distinctly  under- 

Navarrete,  torn.  ii.  p.  7.  A  few  days  later  the  title  of  "Don" 
was  granted  to  Columbus  and  made  hereditary  in  his  family  along; 
with  the  offices  of  viceroy  and  governor-general. 

^  A  police  organization  formed  in  14TG  for  suppressing  highway 
robbery. 

^  It  is  not  easy  to  give  an  accurate  account  of  the  cost  of 
this  most  epoch-making  voyage  in  all  history.  Conflicting  state- 
ments by  different  authorities  combine  with  the  fluctuating  values 
of  different  kinds  of  money  to  puzzle  and  mislead  us.  Accord- 
ing to  M.  Harrisse  1.000,000  maravedis  would  be  equivalent  to 
295,175  francs,  or  about  59,000  gold  dollars  of  United  States  money 
at  present  values.  Las  Casas  (tom.  i.  p.  25(3)  says  that  the  eighth 
part,  raised  by  Columbus,  was  500,  COO  maravedis  (29,500  dollars). 
Account-books  preserved  in  the  archives  of  Simancaa  show  that 
the  sums  paid  from  the  treasury  of  Castile  amounted  to  1,140,000 
maravedis  (07,500  dollars).  Assuming  the  statement  of  Las  Casas 
to  be  correct,  the  amounts  contributed  would  perhaps  have  beea 
as  follows :  — 

Queen  Isabella,  from  Castile  treasury     .     .     .  $67,500 

"                 loan  from  Santangel  ....  59,000 

Columbus 29,500 

Other  sources,    including    contribution   levied 

upon  the  town  of  Palos 80,000 

Total $23(5,000 

This  total  seems  to  me  altogether  too  large  for  probability,  and 
BO  does  the  last  item,  which  is  simply  put  at  the  figure  necessary 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES.  419 

stood  that  Ferdinand  as  king  of  Aragon  had  no 
share  in  the  enterprise,  and  that  the  Sj)anisli  Indies 
were  an  appurtenance  to  the  crown  of  Castile. 
The  agreement  was  signed  April  17,  1492,  and 
with  tears  of  joy  Columbus  vowed  to  devote  every 
maravedi  that  should  come  to  him  to  the  rescue  of 
the  Holy  Sepulchre. 

When  he  reached  Palos  in  May,  with  royal  orders 
for  ships  and  men,  there  had  like  to  Dismay  at 
have  been  a  riot.     Terrible  dismay  was    ^'^^^^' 
felt  at  the  prospect  of  launching  out  for  such  a  voy- 

to  make  the  total  eight  times  29,500.  I  am  inclined  to  suspect 
that  Las  Casas  (with  whom  arithmetic  was  not  always  a  strong 
point)  may  have  got  his  figures  wrong.  The  amount  of  Santan- 
gel's  loan  also  depends  upon  the  statement  of  Las  Casas,  and  we 
do  not  know  whether  he  took  it  from  a  document  or  from  hearsay. 
Nor  do  we  know  whether  it  should  be  added  to,  or  included  in, 
the  first  item.  More  likely,  I  tliink,  tlie  latter.  The  only  item 
that  we  know  with  documentary  certainty  is  the  first,  so  that  our 
Btatement  becomes  modified  as  follows :  — 

Queen  Isabella,  from  Castile  treasury      .     .     .    $67,500 
"  loan  from  Santaugel   ....  ? 

Columbus ? 

J  rent  of  two  fully 
equipped  caravels 
for  two  months,  etc. 

Total .     .     .  ?  " 

(Cf.  Harrisse,  tom.  i.  pp.  391-404.)  Unsatisfactory,  but  cer- 
tain as  far  as  it  goes.  Alas,  how  often  historical  statements  are 
thus  reduced  to  meagreness,  after  tlie  hypothetical  or  ill-supported 
part  has  been  sifted  out !  The  story  that  the  Pinzon  brothers  ad- 
vanced *o  Columbus  his  portion  is  told  by  Las  Casas,  but  he  very 
shrewdly  doubts  it.  The  famous  story  that  Isabella  pledged  her 
crown  jewels  {Vita  delV  Ainmiraglio,  cap.  xi\.)  has  also  been 
doubted,  but  perhaps  on  insufficient  grounds,  by  M.  Harrisse. 
It  is  confirmed  by  Las  Casas  (tom.  i.  p.  249).  According  to  one 
account  she  pledged  them  to  Santangol  in  security  for  his  loan,  — 
which  seems  not  altogether  improbable.  See  Pizarro  y  Orellana, 
Varonei  ilustres  del  Nuevo  Mundo,  Madrid,  1039,  p.  10. 


IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  (MT-3) 


1.0 


I.I 


1.25 


■-  iim  IIIII2.2 


m 


12,0 


.8 


1-4    ill  1.6 


y} 


<^ 


rf 


e. 


ei 


'^1 


.% 


'^4 


/, 


om 


///. 


Photoeraphic 


'Vi    tAJCCT    4JAlk.l    CTDECT 


I 


^^ 


420 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


age  upon  the  Sea  of  Darlmess.  Groans  and  curses 
greeted  the  announcement  of  the  forced  contribu- 
tion. But  Martin  PInzon  and  his  brothers  were 
active  in  supporting  the  crown  officials,  and  the 
work  went  on.  To  induce  men  to  enlist,  debts  were 
forgiven  and  civil  actions  suspended.  Criminals 
were  released  from  jail  on  condition  of  serving. 
Three  caravels  were  impressed  into  the  service  of 
the  crown  for  a  time  unlimited ;  and  the  rent  and 
The  three  fa-  maintenance  of  two  of  these  vessels  for 
ve°8*  the*^  ^^^  months  was  to  be  paid  by  the  town, 
saut'a  Maria,  rpj^^  largest  caravcl,  called  the  Santa 
Maria  or  Capitana,  belonged  to  Juan  de  La  Cosa,  a 
Biscayan  mariner  whose  name  was  soon  to  become 
famous.^  He  now  commanded  her,  with  another 
consummate  sailor,  Sancho  Ruiz,  for  his  pilot. 
This  single  -  decked  craft,  about  ninety  feet  in 
length  by  twenty  feet  breadth  of  beam,  was  the 
Admiral's  flag-ship.  The  second  caravel,  called 
the  Pinta,  a  much  swifter  vessel,  was 
commanded  by  Martin  Pinzon.  She 
belonged  to  two  citizens  of  Palos,  Gomez  Ras- 
con  and  Cristobal  Quintero,  who  were  now  in  her 
crew,  sulky  and  ready  for  mischief.  The  third  and 
smallest  caravel,  the  Nina  ("Baby''), 
had  for  her  commander  Vicente  Yanez 
Pinzon,  the  youngest  of  the  brothers,  now  about 
thirty  years  of  age.  Neither  the  Pinta  nor  the 
Nifla  was  decked  amidships.  On  board  the  three 
«aravels  were  just  ninety  persons.^     And  so  they 


The  Pinta. 


The  NiBa. 


'  Navarrete,  Biblioteca  marhtma,  torn.  ii.  pp.  20S,  20fl. 
^  Tlie  acpounta  of  the  armament  are  well  summed  up  and  dis- 
cuiised  ill  liarrisse,  torn.  i.  pp.  405-408.    Eighty-seveu  names,  out 


I 

t 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES.  421 

set  sail  from  Palos  on  Friday,  Au^st  3,  1492, 
half  an  hour  before  sunrise,  and  by  sunset  bad 
run  due  south  five  and  forty  geographical  miles, 
when  they  shifted  their  course  a  couple  of  points 
to  starboard  and  stood  for  the  Canaries. 

No  thought  of  Vinland  is  betrayed  in  these  pro- 
ceedings. Columbus  was  aiming  at  the  northern 
end  of  Cipango  (Japan).  Upon  Toscanelli's  map, 
which  he  carried  with  him,  the  great  island  of  Ci- 
pango extends  from  5°  to  about  28°  north  lati- 
tude. He  evidently  aimed  at  the  northern  end  of 
Cipango  as  being  directly  on  the  route  to  Zaiton 
(Chang-chow)  and  other  Chinese  cities  mentioned 
by  Marco  Polo.  Accordingly  he  began  by  run- 
ning down  to  the  Canaries,  in  order  that  he  might 
sail  thence  due  west  on  the  28th  paral-  They  go  to  the 
lei  without  shifting  his  course  by  a  sin-  ar'y'doiayed*^ 
gle  point  until  he  should  see  the  coast  "'*'"®' 
of  Japan  looming  up  before  liim.^  On  this  pre- 
liminary run  signs  of  mischief  began  already  to 
show  themselves.  The  Pinta's  rudder  was  broken 
and  unshipped,  and  Columbus  suspected  her  two 
angry  and  chafing  owners  of  having  done  it  on 
purpose,  in  order  that  they  and  their  vessel  might 
be  left  behind.  The  Canaries  at  this  juncture 
merited  the  name  of  Fortunate  Islands ;  fortu- 
nately they,  alone  among  African  islands,  were 
Spanish,  so  that  Columbus  could  stoj)  there  and 
make  repairs.    While  this  was  going  on  the  sailors 

of  the  ninety,  have  been  recovered,  and  the  list  is  given  below, 
Appendix  C. 

^  "  Para  de  alll  tomar  mi  derrota,  y  navegar  tanto  que  yo 
Uegase  &  las  Indias,"  he  says  in  his  journal,  Navarrete,  Cokccion 
de  viages,  torn.  i.  p.  3. 


422  THE  DISCOVEBY  OF  AMERICA. 


Martin  Behaim's  Globe,  1492, 

^  Martin  Behaim  was  bom  at  Nnremherg:  in  1430,  and  is  said 
to  have  been  a  pnpil  of  the  celebrated  astronomer,  Regiomon- 
tamis,  author  of  the  first  almanac  published  in  E)irope,  and  of 
Ephomerides,  of  priceless  value  to  navitjafors.  He  visited  Por- 
tugal about  1480,  invented  a  now  kind  of  astrolabe,  and  sailed 
witli  it  in  14S4  as  cosmojrraphor  in  Dieijo  Cam's  voyape  to  the 
Conf^o.  On  his  return  to  Lisbon  be  was  knipjhted,  and  presently 
went  to  live  on  the  ialaad  of  Fayal,  of  which  his  wife's  father  wu 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES.  423 


reduced  to  Mercator's  projection.^ 

governor.  He  was  a  friend  of  Columbns.  Toward  1402  he  vis- 
ited Nuremberg,  to  look  after  some  family  affairs,  and  while 
there  "  he  gratified  some  of  his  townspeople  by  embodying  in  a 
globe  the  geographical  views  which  prevailed  in  the  maritime 
countries ;  and  the  globe  was  finished  before  Columbus  had  yet 
accomplished  his  voyage.  The  next  year  (1403)  Behaim  returned 
to  Portugal ;  and  after  having  been  sent  to  the  Low  Countries  on 
a  diplomatic  mission,  hu  was  captured  by  English  cruisers  and 


424  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

were  scared  out  of  their  wits  by  an  eruption  of 
Teneriffe,  which  they  deemed  an  omen  of  evil,  and 
it  was  also  reported  that  some  Portuguese  caravels 
were  hovering  in  those  waters,  with  intent  to  cap- 
ture Columbus  and  carry  him  off  to  Lisbon. 

At  length,  on  the  6th  of  September,  they  set 
Columbus  s^il  from  Gomera,  but  were  becalmed 
ja'Sn/sept.  ^ud  had  made  only  thirty  miles  by  the 
6. 1492.  jjjgj^^   ^f    ^Yie   8th.      The   breeze   then 

freshened,  and  when  next  day  the  shores  of  Ferro, 
the  last  of  the  Canaries,  sank  from  sight  on  the 
eastern  horizon,  many  of  the  sailors  loudly  la- 
mented their  unseemly  fate,  and  cried  and  sobbed 
like  children.  Columbus  well  understood  the  diffi- 
culty of  dealing  with  these  men.  He  provided 
against  one  chief  source  of  discontent  by  keeping 
two  different  reckonings,  a  true  one  for  himself 

carried  to  England.  Escaping  finally,  and  reaching  the  Conti- 
nent, he  passes  from  our  view  in  14{)4,  and  is  scarcely  heard  of 
again."  (Winsor,  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist.,  ii.  104.)  He  died  in 
May,  1506.  A  ridiculous  story  that  he  anticipated  Columbus  in 
the  discovery  of  America  originated  in  the  misunderstanding  of 
an  interpolated  passage  in  the  Latin  text  of  Schedel's  Registrum, 
Nuremberg,  1493,  p.  290  (the  so-called  Nuremberg  Chronicle).  See 
Winsor,  op.  cit,  ii.  34  ;  Major's  Prince  Henry,  p.  320 ;  Humboldt, 
Examen  critique,  torn.  i.  p.  250 ;  Murr,  Diplomat ische  Geschichte 
des  Hitters  Behaim,  Nuremberg,  1778 ;  Cladera,  Investigaciones 
tisWricas,  Madrid,  1794;  Harrisse,  Bihliolheca  Americana  Vetus- 
tissima,  pp.  37-43.  —  The  globe  made  by  Behaim  may  now  be 
seen  in  the  city  hall  at  Nuremberg.  It  "is  made  of  papier- 
mache,  covered  with  gypsum,  and  over  this  a  parchment  surface 
received  the  drawing ;  it  is  twenty  inches  in  diameter."  (Winsor, 
<>p.  cit.  ii.  105.)  The  portion  west  of  the  330th  meridian  is  evi- 
dently copied  from  Toscanelli's  map.  I  give  below  (p.  429)  a 
sketch  (from  Winsor,  after  Ruge's  Geschichte  des  Zeitalters  der 
Entdeckungen,  p.  230)  of  Behaim's  ocean,  with  the  outline  of  thi 
American  oontiuent  superimposed  iu  the  proper  place. 


J_ 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   THE  INDIES. 


425 


i 

; 

■ 


and  a  false  one  for  his  officers  and  crews.  He  was 
shrewd  enough  not  to  overdo  it  and  awaken  dis- 
trust. Thils  after  a  twenty-four  hours'  run  of  180 
miles  on  September  10,  he  reported  it  as  144 
miles  ;  next  day  the  run  was  120  miles  and  he 
announced  it  as  108,  and  so  on.  But  for  this  pru- 
dent if  somewhat  questionable  device,  it  is  not 
unlikely  that  the  first  week  of  October  would  have 
witnessed  a  mutiny  in  which  Columbus  would  have 
been  either  thrown  overboard  or  forced  to  turn 
back. 

The  weather  was  delicious,  and  but  for  the  bug- 
a-boos  that  worried  those  poor  sailors  it  would 
have  been  a  most  pleasant  voyage.  Chief  among 
the  imaginary  terrors  were  three  which  deserve 
especial  mention.  At  nightfall  on  September  13 
the  ships  had  crossed  the  magnetic  line  of  no  vari- 
ation, and  Columbus  was  astonished  to  see  that  the 
compass-needle,  instead  of  pointing  a  oeflectionof 
little  to  the  right  of  the  pole-star,  began  *^««««<ii«- 
to  sway  toward  the  left,  and  next  day  this  devia- 
tion increased.  It  was  impossible  to  hide  such 
a  fact  from  the  sharp  eyes  of  the  pilots,  and  all 
were  seized  with  alarm  at  the  suspicion  that  this 
witch  instrument  was  beginning  to  play  them  some 
foul  trick  in  punishment  of  their  temerity ;  but 
Columbus  was  ready  with  an  ingenious  astronom- 
ical explanation,  and  their  faith  in  the  profundity 
of  his  knowledge  prevailed  over  their  terrors. 

The  second  alarm  came  on  September  16,  when 
they  struck  into  vast  meadows  of  floatmg  seaweeds 
and  grasses,  abounding  in  tunny  fish  and  crabs. 
They  had  now  come  more  than  800  miles  from 


426 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Ferro  and  were  entering  the  wonderful  Sargasso 
The  Sargasso  Sea,that  region  of  the  Atlantic  six  times 
as  large  as  France,  where  tast  tangles 
of  vegetation  grow  upon  the  surface  of  water  that 
is  more  than  2,000  fathoms  deep,  and  furnish  sus- 
tenance for  an  untold  wealth  of    fishy  life.^     To 

^  The  situation  of  this  Sargasso  region  in  mid-ocean  seems  to 
be  determined  by  its  character  as  a  quiet  neutral  ground  between 
the  (jreat  ocean-currents  that  flow  past  it  on  every  side.  Sargasso 
plants  are  found  elsewhere  upon  the  surface  of  the  waves,  but 
nowhere  else  do  they  congregate  as  here.  There  are  reasons  for 
supposing  that  in  ancient  times  this  region  extended  nearer  to 
the  African  coast.  Skylax  {Periplus,  cap,  109)  say i  that  beyont 
Kerne,  at  the  mouth  of  Rio  d'  Ouro  the  sea  cannot  be  navigated 
on  account  of  the  mud  and  seaweed.  Sataspes,  on  his  rettxrn  to 
Persia,  B.  c.  470,  told  King  Xerxes  that  his  voyage  failed  be- 
cause his  ship  stopped  or  was  stuck  fast.  (Herodotus,  iv.  43.) 
Festus  Avienus  mentions  vast  quantities  of  seaweed  in  the  ocean 
west  of  the  Pillars  of  Hercules :  — 

ExBuperat  autem  gitrgitem  fticus  frequena 
Atque  impeditur  scstiia  ex  uligine  .  .  . 
Sic  nulla  late  flabra  propellutit  ratem, 
Sic  segnia  humor  aequoris  pigri  stupet. 
Adjicit  et  illud,  plurimum  inter  g^rgitea 
Ezstare  fucum,  et  ssepe  Tirgulti.vice 
Retinere  puppim,  etc. 

Avienus,  Ora  Maritima,  108, 117. 

See  also  Aristotle,  MeteoroL,  ii.  1,  14;  Pseudo-Aristotle,  De 
Mirah.  Auscult.,  p.  106;  Theophrastus,  Historia  plantarum,  iv.  7 
Jornandes,  De  rebus  Geticis,  apud  Muratori,  tom.  i.  p.  191 ;  ac- 
cording to  Strabo  (iii.  2,  §  7)  tunny  fish  were  caught  in  abundance 
in  the  ocean  west  of  Spain,  and  were  highly  valued  for  the  table 
on  accoimt  of  their  fatness  which  was  due  to  submarine  vegetables 
on  wliich  they  fed.  Possibly  the  reports  of  these  Sargasso  mead- 
ows may  have  had  some  share  in  suggesting  to  Plato  his  notion  of 
a  huge  submerged  island  Atlantis  {TIitkbus,  25 ;  Kritias,  108  ;  cf. 
the  notion  of  a  viscous  sea  in  Plutarch,  De  facte  in  Orbc  Luna,  26). 
Plato's  fancy  has  furnished  a  theme  for  much  wild  speculation. 
See,  for  example,  Bailly,  Lettres  sur  V Atlantide  de  Platon,  Paris, 
1779.  The  belief  that  there  can  ever  have  been  such  an  island  in 
that  part  of  the  Atlantic  is  disposed  of  by  the  fact  that  the  ocean 


TUE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


427 


1 

if 

:1 


the  eye  of  the  mariner  the  Sargasso  Sea  presents 
somewhat  the  appearance  of  an  endless  green  prai- 
rie, but  modern  ships  plough  through  it  with  ease 
and  so  did  the  caravels  of  Columbus  at  first. 
After  two  or  three  days,  however,  the  wind  being 
light,  their  progress  was  somewhat  impeded.  It 
was  not  strange  that  the  crews  were  frightened  at 
such  a  sight.  It  seemed  uncanny  and  weird,  and 
revived  ancient  fancies  about  mysterious  impass- 
able seas  and  overbold  mariners  whose  ships  had 
been  stuck  fast  in  them.  The  more  practical 
spirits  were  afraid  of  running  aground  upon  sub- 
merged shoals,  but  all  were  somewhat  reassured 
on  this  point  when  it  was  found  that  their  longest 
plummet-lines  failed  to  find  bottom. 

On  September  22  the  journal  reports  "  no  more 
grass."  They  were  in  clear  water  again,  and  more 
than  1,400  geographical  miles  from  the  Canaries. 

there  is  nowhere  less  than  two  miles  in  depth.  See  the  beautiful 
map  of  the  Atlantic  sea-bottom  in  Alexander  Agassiz's  Three 
Cruises  of  the  Blake,  Boston,  1888,  vol.  i.  p.  108,  and  compare 
chap.  vi.  of  that  noble  work,  on  "  The  Permanence  of  Continents 
and  of  Oceanic  Basins ;  "  see  also  Wallace's  Island  Life,  chap.  vi. 
It  was  formerly  supposed  that  the  Sarg-asso  plants  grow  on  the 
ea-bottom,  and  becoming  detached  rise  to  the  surface  (Peter 
Martyr,  De  rebus  oceanicis,  dec.  iii.  lib.  v.  p.  53 ;  Humboldt,  Per- 
sonal Narrative,  book  i.  chap,  i.)  t  but  it  is  now  known  that  they 
are  simply  rooted  in  the  surface  water  itself.  "  L' accumulation 
de  ces  plantes  marines  est  I'exemple  le  plus  frappant  de  plantes 
cong^n^res  r^unies  sur  le  meme  point.  Ni  les  forets  colossales  de 
1' Himalaya,  ni  les  gramin«5es  qui  s'^tendent  k  perte  de  vue  dans 
les  savanes  am^ricaines  ou  les  steppes  sib^riens  ne  rivalisent  avec 
ces  prairies  oc^aniques.  Jamais  sur  un  espace  aussi  ^tendu,  ne  se 
rencontrent  de  telles  masses  de  plantes  semblables.  Quand  on  a 
vu  lamer  des  Sargasses,  on  n'oublie  point  un  pareil  spectacle." 
Paul  Gaffarel,  "  La  Mer  des  Sargasses,"  Bulletin  de  Giog^aphie, 
Paris,  1872,  6«  s^rie,  torn.  iv.  p.  622. 


428  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

A  third  source  of  alarm  had  already  begun  to  dis- 
turb  the  sailors.  They  were  discovering  much 
more  than  they  had  bargained  for.  They  were  in 
The  trade  the  belt  of  the  trade  winds,  and  as  the 
**"**•  gentle  but  unfailing  breeze  wafted  them 

steadily  westward,  doubts  began  to  arise  as  to 
whether  it  would  ever  be  possible  to  return.  For- 
tunately soon  after  this  question  began  to  be  dis^ 
cussed,  the  wind,  jealous  of  its  character  for  capri- 
ciousness  even  there,  veered  into  the  southwest. 

By  September  25  the  Admiral's  chief  difficulty 
had  come  to  be  the  impatience  of  his  crews  at  not 
finding  land.  On  that  day  there  was  a  mirage,  or 
Impatience  of  somc  such  iUusiou,  which  Columbus  and 
the  crews.  g^jj  hauds  supposed  to  be  a  coast  in  front 
of  them,  and  hymns  of  praise  were  sung,  but  at 
dawn  next  day  they  were  cruelly  undeceived. 
Flights  of  strange  birds  and  other  signs  of  land 
kept  raising  hopes  which  were  presently  dashed 
again,  and  the  men  passed  through  alternately  hot 
and  cold  fits  of  exultation  and  dejection.  Such 
mockery  seemed  to  show  that  they  were  entering  a 
realm  of  enchantment.  Somebody,  perhaps  one 
of  the  released  jail-birds,  hinted  that  if  a  stealthy 
thrust  should  happen  some  night  to  push  the  Ad- 
miral overboard,  it  could  be  plausibly  said  that  he 
had  slipped  and  fallen  while  star-gazing.  His  sit- 
uation grew  daily  more  perilous,  and  the  fact  that 
he  was  an  Italian  commanding  Spaniards  did  not 
help  him.  Perhaps  what  saved  him  was  their 
vague  belief  in  his  superior  knowledge  ;  they  may 
have  felt  that  they  should  need  him  in  going 
back. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES.  429 

By  October  4  there  were  ominous  symptoms  of 
mutiny,  and  the  anxiety  of  Columbus  was  evinced 
in  the  extent  of  his  bold  understatement  of  that 


Cathaja 


Martin  Behaim's  Atlantic  Ocean  (with  outline  of  American 
continent  superimposed). 

day's  run,  — 138  miles  instead  of  the  true  figure 
189.  For  some  days  his  pilots  had  been  begging 
him  to  change  his  course ;  perhaps  they  had  passed 
between  islands.  Anything  for  a  change!  On 
the  7th  at  sunrise,  they  had  come  2,724 
geographical  miles  from  the  Canaries,  couwe*r''om 
which  was  farther  than  the  Admiral's  ^•*°^®-^- 
estimate  of  the  distance  to  Cipango ;  but  accord- 
ing to  his  false  statement  of  the  runs,  it  appeared 
that  they  had  come  scarcely  2,200  miles.  This 
leads  one  to  suspect  that  in  stating  the  length  of 
the  voyage,  as  he  had  so  often  done,  at  700  leagues. 


480  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

he  may  have  purposely  made  it  out  somewhat 
shorter  than  he  really  believed  it  to  be.  But  now 
after  coming  more  than  2,500  miles  he  began  to 
fear  that  he  might  be  sailing  past  Cipango  on  the 
north,  and  so  he  shifted  his  course  two  points  to 
larboard,  or  west-southwest.  If  a  secret  know- 
ledge of  Vinland  had  been  his  guiding-star  he 
surely  would  not  have  turned  his  helm  that  way ; 
but  a  glance  at  the  Toscanelli  map  shows  what 
was  in  his  mind.  Numerous  flights  of  small  birds 
confirmed  his  belief  that  land  at  the  southwest 
was  not  far  off.  The  change  of  direction  was 
probably  fortunate.  If  he  had  persisted  in  keeping 
on  the  parallel,  720  miles  would  have  brought  him 
to  the  coast  of  Florida,  a  little  south  of  Cape  Mal- 
abar. After  the  change  he  had  but  505  miles  of 
water  before  him,  and  the  temper  of  the  sailors  was 
gi'owing  more  dangerous  with  every  mile,^  —  until 
October  11,  when  the  signs  of  land  became  unmis- 
takable, and  the  wildest  excitement  prevailed.  A  re- 
ward of  10,000  maravedis  had  been  promised  to  the 
person  who  should  first  discover  land,  and  ninety 
pair  of  eyes  were  strained  that  night  with  look* 
ing.  About  ten  o'clock  the  Admiral,  standing  05 
the  tower-like  poop  of  his  vessel,  saw  a  distant 
light  moving  as  if  somebody  were  running  along 

*  The  often-repeated  story  that  a  day  or  two  before  the  end  of 
the  voyage  Columbus  capitulated  with  his  crew,  promising  to  turn 
back  if  land  were  not  seen  within  three  days,  rests  upon  the  single 
and  relatively  inferior  authority  of  Oviedo.  It  is  not  mentioned 
by  Las  Casas  or  Bemaldez  or  Peter  Martyr  or  Ferdinand  Colum- 
bus, and  it  is  discredited  by  the  tone  of  the  Admiral's  journal, 
which  shows  as  unconquerable  determination  on  the  last  day  of 
the  voyage  as  on  any  previous  day.     Cf .  Irving,  vol.  L  p.  187. 


..^,..:x,^i^.i,jiji.t,;^t..ii.^ 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


481 


the  shore  with  a  torch.     This  interpretation  was 
doubted,  but  a  few  hours  later  a  sailor  on   the 
Pinta  saw  land  distinctly,  and  soon  it  was  visible 
to  all,  a  long  low  coast  about  five  miles 
distant.     This  was  at  two  in  the  morn-  oct.  12  (n.  s. 
•  ing  of  Friday,  October  12,i  —  just  ten  ''^'"^' 
weeks  since  they  had  sailed  from  Palos,  just  thirty- 
three  days  since  they  had  lost  sight  of  the  coast 
of  Ferro.     The  sails  were  now  taken  in,  and  the 
ships  lay  to,  awaiting  the  dawn. 

At  daybreak  the  boats  were  lowered  and  Co- 
lumbus, with  a  large  part  of  his  company,  went 
ashore.  Upon  every  side  were  trees  of  unknown 
kinds,  and  the  landscape  seemed  exceedingly 
beautiful.  Confident  that  they  must  have  The  orewi  go 
attained  the  object  for  which  they  had  '"''°"- 
set  sail,  the  crews  were  wild  with  exultation.  Their 
heads  were  dazed  with  fancies  of  princely  fortunes 
close  at  hand.  The  officers  embraced  Columbus  or 
kissed  his  hands,  while  the  sailors  threw  themselves 
at  his  feet,  craving  pardon  and  favour. 

These  proceedings  were  watched  with  unutter- 
able amazement  and  awe  by  a  multitude  of  men, 
women,  and  children  of  cinnamon  hue,  n,e  wton- 
different  from  any  kind  of  people  the  ^^^^  ««"'«■• 
Spaniards  had  ever  seen.  All  were  stark  naked 
and  most  of  them  were  more  or  less  greased  and 
painted.  They  thought  that  the  ships  were  sea- 
monsters  and  the  white  men  supernatural  creatures 

^  Applying  the  Gifigonan  Calendar,  or  "  new  style,"  it  becomes 
the  21st.  The  four  hundredth  anniversary  will  properly  fall  on 
October  21, 1892. 


432  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

descended  from  the  sky.^  At  first  they  fled  m 
terror  as  these  formidable  beings  came  ashore,  but 
presently,  as  they  found  themselves  unmolested, 
curiosity  began  to  overcome  fear,  and  they  slowly 
approached  the  Spaniards,  stopping  at  every  few 
paces  to  prostrate  themselves  in  adoration.  After 
a  time,  as  the  Spaniards  received  them  with  en- 
couraging nods  and  smiles,  they  waxed  bold  enough 
to  come  close  to  the  visitors  and  pass  their  hands 
over  them,  doubtless  to  make  sure  that  all  this 
marvel  was  a  reality  and  not  a  mere  vision.  Ex- 
periences in  Africa  had  revealed  the  eagerness  of 
barbarians  to  trade  off  their  possessions  for  trin- 
kets, and  now  the  Spaniards  began  exchanging 
glass  beads  and  hawks'  bells  for  cotton  yarn,  tame 
parrots,  and  small  gold  ornaments.  Some  sort  of 
conversation  in  dumb  show  went  on,  and  Columbus 
naturally  interpreted  everything  in  such  wise  as  to 
fit  his  theories.  Whether  the  natives  understood 
liim  or  not  when  he  asked  them  where  they  got 
their  gold,  at  any  rate  they  pointed  to  the  south, 
and  thus  confirmed  Columbus  in  his  suspicion  that 
he  had  come  to  some  island  a  little  to  the  north  of 
the  opulent  Cipango.  He  soon  found  that  it  was 
Guam,hM>i:  »  Small  island,  and  he  understood  the 
where waa it?    ^^^^  ^f  j^.  ^^  ^^  Guauahani.     He  took 

formal  possession  of  it  for  Castile,  just  as  the  dis- 
coverers of  the  Cape  Verde  islands  and  the  Guinea 
coasts  had  taken  possession  of  those   places  for 

^  This  is  a  eommon  notion  among  barbarians.  "  The  Polyne- 
sians imagine  that  the  sky  descends  at  the  horizon  and  encloses 
the  earth.  Hence  they  call  foreigners  papalangi,  or  '  heaven- 
bursters,'  as  having  broken  in  from  another  worid  outside."  Max 
Miiller,  Chips  from  a  German  Workshop,  vol.  ii.  p.  268. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES.  433 

Portugal ;  and  he  gave  it  a  Christian  name,  San 
Salvador.  That  name  has  since  the  seventeenth 
century  been  given  to  Cat  island,  but  perhaps  in 
pursuance  of  a  false  theory  of  map-makers ;  it  is 
not  proved  that  Cat  island  is  the  Guanahani  of 
Columbus.  All  that  can  positively  be  asserted  of 
Guanahani  is  that  it  was  one  of  the  Bahamas  j 
there  has  been  endless  discussion  as  to  which  one, 
and  the  question  is  not  easy  to  settle.  Perhaps 
the  theory  of  Captain  Gustavus  Fox,  of  the  United 
States  navy,  is  on  the  whole  best  supported.  Cap- 
tain Fox  maintains  that  the  true  Guanahani  was 
the  little  island  now  known  as  Samana  or  Atwood's 
Cay.i  The  problem  well  illustrates  the  difficulty 
in  identifying  any  route  from  even  a  good  descrip- 
tion of  landmarks,  without  the  help  of  persistent 
proper  names,  especially  after  the  lapse  of  time 
has  somewhat  altered  the  landmarks.  From  this 
point  of  view  it  is  a  very  interesting  problem  and 
has  its  lessons  for  us;  otherwise  it  is  of  no  im- 
portance. 

A  cruise  of  ten  days  among  the  Bahamas,  with 
visits  to  four  of  the  islands,  satisfied  Columbus  that 
he  was  in  the  ocean  just  east  of  Cathay,  for  Marco 
Polo  had  described  it  as  studded  with  „     . 

Groping  for 

thousands  of  spice-bearing  islands,  and  C'pango  and 

^  °  '  the  route  to 

the  Catalan  map  shows  that  some  of  Q"i"8ay- 
these  were  supposed  to  be  inhabited  by  naked  sav- 
ages.    To  be  sure,  he  could  not  find  any  sjjices  or 

^  "An  Attempt  to  solve  the  Problem  of  the  First  Landing 
Place  of  Columbus  in  the  New  World,"  in  United  States  Coast 
and  Geodetic  Survey  —  Report  for  1S6Q  — Appendix  18,  Washing- 
ton, 1882. 


'I  and  sends  en- 


434  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

valuable  drugs,  but  the  air  was  full  of  fragrance 
and  the  trees  and  herbs  were  strange  in  aspect  and 
might  mean  anything  ;  so  for  a  while  he  was  ready 
to  take  the  spices  on  trust.  Upon  inquiries  about 
gold  the  natives  always  pointed  to  the  south,  ap- 
parently meaning  Cipango ;  and  in  that  direction 
Columbus  steered  on  the  25th  of  October,  intend- 
ing to  stay  in  that  wealthy  island  long  enough  to 
obtain  all  needful  information  concerning  its  arts 
and  commerce.  Thence  a  sail  of  less  than  ten  days 
would  bring  him  to  the  Chine:;0  coast,  along  which 
he  might  comfortably  cruise  northwesterly  as  far  as 
Quinsay  and  deliver  to  the  Great  Khan  a  friendly 
letter  with  which  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  had  pro- 
vided him.  Alas,  poor  Columbus  —  unconscious 
prince  of  discoverers  —  groping  here  in  Cuban 
waters  for  the  way  to  a  city  on  the  other  side  of 
the  globe  and  to  a  sovereign  whose  race  had  more 
than  a  century  since  been  driven  from  the  throne 
and  expelled  from  the  very  soil  of  Cathay !  Could 
anything  be  more  pathetic,  or  better  illustrate  the 
profound  irony  with  which  our  universe  seems  to 
be  governed  ? 

On  reaching  Cuba  the  Admiral  was  charmed 
with  the  marvellous  beauty  of  the  landscape,  —  a 
point  in  which  he  seems  to  have  been  unusually 
sensitive.  He  found  pearl  oysters  along  the  shore, 
Columbus  ^^^  although  no  splendid  cities  as  yet 
Ind  sends  eS'  appeared,  he  did  not  doubt  that  he  had 
ceTainAic  reached  Cipango.  But  his  attempts  at 
pnuce.  talking  with   the  amazed  natives   only 

served  to  darken  counsel.  He  understood  them  to 
say  that  Cuba  was  part  of  the  Asiatic  continent, 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


435 


and  that  there  was  a  king  in  the  neiglibourhood 
who  was  at  war  with  the  Great  Khan !  So  he 
sent  two  messengers  to  seek  this  refractory  poten- 
tate, —  one  of  them  a  converted  Jew  acquainted 
with  Arabic,  a  language  sometimes  heard  far  east- 
ward in  Asia,  as  Columbus  must  have  known. 
These  envoys  found  pleasant  villages,  with  large 
houses,  surrounded  with  fields  of  such  unknown 
vegetables  as  maize,  potatoes,  and  tobacco  ;  they 
saw  men  and  women  smoking  cigars,^  and  little 
dreamed  that  in  that  fragrant  and  soothing  herb 
there  was  a  richer  source  of  revenue  than  the 
spices  of  the  East.  They  passed  acres  of  growing 
cotton  and  saw  in  the  houses  piles  of  yarn  wait- 
ing to  be  woven  into  rude  cloth  or  twisted  into 
nets  for  hammocks.  But  they  found  neither  cities 
nor  kings,  neither  gold  nor  spices,  and  after  a 
tedious  quest  returned,  somewhat  disappointed,  to 
the  coast. 

Columbus  seems  now  to  have  become  perplexed, 
and  to  have  vacillated  somewhat  in  his  purposes. 
If  this  was  the  continent  of  Asia  it  was  nearer 
than  he  had  supposed,  and  how  far  mis-  coiumbns 
taken  he  had  been  in  his  calculations  no  ^^aTd  f  Phizon 
one  could  tell.  But  where  was  Cipango  ?  ^^^^^  '"™- 
He  gathered  from  the  natives  that  there  was  a 


^  The  first  recorded  mention  of  tobacco  is  in  Columbus's  diary 
for  November  20,  1492 :  —  "  Hallaron  los  dos  criatianos  por  el 
camino  mucha  gente  que  atravesaba  d  sus  pueblos,  mugeres  y 
liombres  con  un  tizon  en  la  mano,  yerbas  para  tomar  sus  sahume- 
rios  que  acostumbraban,"  i.  e.  "  the  two  Christians  met  on  the 
road  a  great  many  people  going  to  their  villages,  men  and  women 
with  brands  in  their  hands,  made  of  herbs  for  taking  their  cus- 
tomary smoke."     Navarrete,  torn.  i.  p.  51. 


436  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

great  island  to  the  southeast,  abounding  in  gold, 
and  so  he  turned  his  prows  in  that  direction.  On 
the  20th  of  November  he  was  deserted  by  Martin 
Pinzon,  whose  ship  could  always  outsail  the  others. 
It  seems  to  have  been  Pinzon's  design  to  get  home 
in  advance  with  such  a  story  as  would  enable  him 
to  claim  for  himself  an  undue  share  of  credit  for 
the  discovery  of  the  Indies.  This  was  the  earliest 
instance  of  a  kind  of  treachery  such  as  too  often 
marred  the  story  of  Spanish  exploration  and  con- 
quest in  the  New  World. 

For  a  fortnight  after  Pinzon's  desertion  Co- 
lumbus crept  slowly  eastward  along  the  coast  of 
Cuba,  now  and  then  landing  to  examine  the  coun- 
try and  its  products ;  and  it  seemed  to  him  that 
besides  pearls  and  mastic  and  aloes  he  found  in  the 
rivers  indications  of  gold.  When  he  reached  the 
cape  at  the  end  of  the  island  he  named  it  Alpha  and 
Omega,  as  being  the  extremity  of  Asia,  —  Omega 
from  the  Portuguese  point  of  view,  Alpha  from  his 
own.  On  the  6th  of  December  he  landed  upon  the 
northwestern  coast  of  the  island  of  Hayti,  which  he 

called  Espaiiola,  Hispaniola,  or  "  Spanish 
arrives  at  land."  ^  Here,  as  the  natives  seemed  to 
thinks  it  must  tcll  him  of  a  rcgiou  to  the  southward 

and  quite  inland  which  abounded  in 
gold,  and  which  fhey  called  Cibao,  the  Admiral  at 
once  caught  upon  the  apparent  similarity  of  sounds 
and  fancied  that  Cibao  must  be  Cipango,  and  that 

1  Not  "  Little  Spain,"  as  the  form  of  the  word,  so  much  like  a 
dimimitive,  might  seem  to  indicate.  It  is  simply  the  feminine  of 
Espahol,  "Spanisli,"  so.  tierra  ov  isla.  Columbus  believed  that 
the  island  was  larger  than  Spain.  See  his  letter  to  Gabriel  San- 
chez, iu  llarrisse,  torn.  i.  p.  428. 


m 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


437 


at  lengih  he  had  arrived  upon  that  island  of  mar- 
vels. ^  It  was  much  nearer  the  Asiatic  mainland 
(i.  e.  Cuba)  than  he  had  supposed,  but  then,  it 
was  bejrinning  to  appear  that  in  any  case  some- 
body's geography  must  be  wrong.  Columbus  was 
enchanted  with  the  scenery.  "The  land  is  ele- 
vated," he  says,  "  with  many  mountains  and  peaks 
.  .  .  most  beautiful,  of  a  thousand  varied  forms, 
accessible,  and  full  of  trees  of  endless  varieties,  so 
tall  that  they  seem  to  touch  the  sky ;  and  I  have 
been  told  that  they  never  lose  their  foliage.  The 
nightingale  [i.  e  some  kind  of  thrush]  and  other 
small  birds  of  a  thousand  kinds  were  singing  in 
the  month  of  November  [December]  when  I  was 
there."  1  Before  he  had  done  much  toward  ex- 
ploring this  paradise,  a  sudden  and  grave  mishap 
quite  altered  his  plans.  On  Christmas 
morning,  between  midnight  and  dawn,  SntaV/rS,* 
owing  to  careless  disobedience  of  orders  ^*''"  '^^'  "^' 
on  the  part  of  the  helmsman,  the  flag-ship  struck 
upon  a  sand-bank  near  the  present  site  of  Port  au 
Paix.  All  attempts  to  get  her  afloat  were  unavail- 
ing, and  the  waves  soon  beat  her  to  pieces. 

This  catastrophe  brought  home,  with  startling 
force,  to  the  mind  of  Columbus,  the  fact  that  the 
news  of  his  discovery  of  land  was  not  yet  known 
in  Europe.  As  for  the  Pinta  and  her  insubordinate 
commander,    none    could    say   whether 

,■.  1  1  ,  .  Columbus 

tney    would    ever    be    seen    again    or  decides  to  po 
whether  their  speedy  arrival  in  Spain     *'^    **  ^*"'' 
might  not  portend  more  harm  than  good  to  Colum- 

^  Columbus  to  Santangel,  February  15,  1493  (Navarrete,  torn.  L 
p.  168). 


438  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

bus.  His  armament  was  now  reduced  to  the  little 
undecked  Niiia  alone,  such  a  craft  as  we  should 
deem  about  fit  for  a  summer  excursion  on  Long 
Isb.nd  Sound.  What  if  his  party  shoiild  all  perish, 
or  oe  stranded  helpless  on  these  strange  coasts,  be- 
fore any  news  of  their  success  should  reach  the  ears 
of  friends  in  Europe  !  Then  the  name  of  Columbus 
would  serve  as  a  by-word  for  foolhardiness,  and  his 
mysterious  fate  would  simply  deter  other  expedi- 
tions from  following  in  the  same  course.  Obviously 
the  first  necessity  of  the  situation  was  to  return  to 
Spain  immediately  and  report  what  had  already 
been  done.  Then  it  would  be  easy  enough  to  get 
ships  and  men  for  a  second  voyage. 

This  decision  led  to  the  founding  of  an  embryo  col- 
ony upon  Hispaniola.  There  was  not  room  enough 
for  all  the  party  to  go  in  the  Nina,  and  quite  a  num- 
ber begged  to  be  left  behind,  because  they  found 
life  upon  the  island  lazy  and  the  natives,  especially 
the  women,  seemed  well-disposed  toward  them.  So 
a  blockhouse  was  built  out  of  the  wrecked  ship's 
Building  of  timbers  and  armed  with  her  guns,  and  in 
hous''e''La  commcmoration  of  that  eventful  Christ- 
Navid'ad.  „jas  it  was  called  Fort  Nativity  (La 
Navidad).  Here  forty  men  were  left  behind,  with 
provisions  enough  for  a  whole  year,  and  on  Jan- 
uary 4,  1493,  the  rest  of  the  party  went  on  board 
the  Nina  and  set  sail  for  Spain.  Two  days  later 
in  following  the  northern  coast  of  Hispaniola  they 
encountered  the  Pinta,  whose  commander  had  been 
Meetin  with  delayed  by  trading  with  the  natives  and 
Piiuon.  jjy  finding  some  gold.     Pinzon  tried  to 

explain  his  sudden  disappearance  by  alleging  that 


THE  SEARCH  FOB  THE  INDIES. 


439 


stress  of  weather  had  parted  him  from  his  com- 
rades, but  his  excuses  were  felt  to  be  lame  and  im- 
probable. However  it  may  have  been  with  his 
excuses,  there  was  no  doubt  as  to  the  lameness  of 
his  foremast ;  it  had  been  too  badly  sprung  to  carry 
much  sail,  so  that  the  Pinta  could  not  again  run 
away  from  her  consort. 

On  this  return  voyage  the  Admiral,  finding  the 
trade  winds  dead  against  him,  took  a  northeasterly 
course  until  he  had  passed  the  thirty-seventh  par- 
allel and  then  headed  straight  toward  Spain.  On 
the  12tli  of  Februarv  a  storm  was  brew- 

n     ,       .  , ,    "  ,     »  ,  .       Terrible  storm 

mg,  and  during  the  next  i6ur  days  it  in  mid-ocean, 
raged  with  such  terrific  violence  that  it 
is  a  wonder  how  those  two  frail  caravels  ever  came 
out  of  it.  They  were  separated  this  time  not  to 
meet  again  upon  the  sea.  Expecting  in  all  likeli- 
hood to  be  engulfed  in  the  waves  with  his  tiny 
craft,  Columbus  sealed  and  directed  to  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella  two  brief  reports  of  his  discovery,  writ- 
ten upon  parchment.  Each  of  these  he  wrapped 
in  a  cloth  and  inclosed  in  the  middle  of  a  larsre 
cake  of  wax,  which  was  then  securely  shut  up  in  a 
barrel.  One  of  the  barrels  was  flung  into  the  sea, 
the  other  remained  standing  on  the  little  quarter- 
deck to  await  the  fate  of  the  caravel.  The  anxiety 
was  not  lessened  by  the  sight  of  land  on  the  IStli, 
for  }^  was  impossible  to  approach  it  so  as  to  go 
ashore,  and  there  was  much  danger  of  being  dashed 
to  pieces. 

At  length  on  the  18th,  the  storm  having  abated, 
the  ship's  boat  went  ashore  and  found  that  it  was 
the  island  of  St.  Mary,  one  of  the  Azores.     It  is 


440 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMEBIC  A. 


worthy  of  note  that  such  skiKul  sailors  as  the 
Nina's  captain,  Vicente  Yafisz  Pinzon,  and  the  pilot 
Ruiz  were  so  confused  in  their  reckoning  as  to 
Cold  reception  Hupposc  themselvcs  near  the  Madei- 
ftt  the  Azores.  ^^^^  wlicrcas   Columbus  had  correctly 

maintained  that  they  were  approaching  the  Azores^ 
—  a  good  instance  of  his  consummate  judgment  in 
nautical  questions.^  From  the  Portuguese  gov- 
ernor of  the  island  this  Spanish  company  met  with 
a  very  ungracious  reception.  A  party  of  sailors 
whom  Columbus  sent  ashore  to  a  small  chapel  of 
the  Virgin,  to  give  thanks  for  their  deliverance 
from  shipwreck,  were  seized  and  held  as  prisoners 
for  five  days.  It  afterwards  appeared  that  this  was 
done  in  pursuance  of  general  instructions  from  the 
king  of  Portugal  to  the  governors  of  his  various 
islands.  If  Columbus  had  gone  ashore  he  would 
probably  have  been  arrested  himself.  As  it  was, 
he  took  such  a  high  tone  and  threatened  to  such 
good  purpose  that  the  governor  of  St.  Mary  was 
fain  to  give  up  his  prisoners  for  fear  of  bringing 
on  another  war  between  Portugal  and  Castile. 

Having  at  length  got  away  from  this  unfriendly 
island,  as  the  Nina  was  making  her  way  toward 
Cape  St.  Vincent  and  within  400  miles  of  it,  she 
was  seized  by  another  fierce  tempest  and  driven 
upon  the  coast  of  Portugal,  where  Co- 
lumbus and  his  crew  were  glad  of  a 
chance  to  run  into  the  river  Tagus  for 
tolfavVhiin^    shelter.      The  news  of  his  voyage  and 

assassinated;       -,  .        ,.  .  i     •     i        *  'i. 

his  discoveries  aroused   mtense   excite- 
ment in  Lisbon.     Astonishment  was  mingled  with 
^  Las  Casas,  torn.  i.  pp.  443,  449. 


ColumbuB  i» 
driven  ashoi? 
in  Portugal, 
where  the 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


441 


chagrin  at  the  thought  that  the  opportunity  for  all 
tliis  glory  and  profit  had  first  been  offered  to  Por- 
tugal and  foolishly  lost.  The  king  even  now  tried 
to  persuade  himself  that  Columbus  had  somehow 
or  other  been  trespassing  upon  the  vast  and  vague 
undiscovered  dominions  granted  to  the  Crown  of 
Portugal  by  Pope  Eugenius  IV.  Some  of  the 
king's  counsellors  are  said  to  have  urged  him  to  have 
Columbus  assassinated  ;  it  would  be  easy  enough 
to  provoke  such  a  high-spirited  man  into  a  quarrel 
and  then  run  him  through  the  body.^  To  clearer 
heads,  however,  the  imprudence  of  such  a  course 
was  manifest.  It  was  already  impossible  to  keep 
the  news  of  the  discovery  from  reaching  ^^^  ^^  ^^^^^ 
Spain,  and  Portugal  could  not  afford  to  gS^i/ would 
go  to  war  with  her  stronger  neighbour.  ^  dangerous. 
In  fact  even  had  John  II.  been  base  enough  to  re- 
sort to  assassination,  which  seems  quite  incompat- 
ible with  the  general  character  of  Lope  de  Vega's 
"  perfect  prince,"  Columbus  was  now  too  important 
a  personage  to  be  safely  interfered  with.  So  he  was 
invited  to  court  and  made  much  of.  On  the  13th 
of  March  he  set  sail  again  and  arrived  in  the  har- 
bour of  Palos  at  noon  of  the  15th.  His  little  cara- 
vel was  promptly  recognized  by  the  people,  and  as 
her  story  flew  from  mouth  to  mouth  all  the  busi- 
ness of  the  town  was  at  an  end  for  that  day.^ 

^  Thi8  story  rests  upon  the  explicit  statement  of  a  contemporary 
Portuguese  historian  of  high  authority,  Garcia  de  Resende,  Chron^ 
tea  del  Rey  Dom  Joao  II.,  Lisbon,  1622,  cap.  clxiv.  (written  about 
1510) ;  see  aJso  Vasconcellos,  Vida  del  Rey  Don  Juan  II.,  Madrid, 
B39,  lib.  vi. 

2  ' '  When  they  learnt  that  she  returned  in  triumph  from  the 
discovery  of  a  world,  the  whole  community  broke  forth  into  trans* 


442  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

Towards  evening,  while  the  bells  were  ringing 
and  the  streets  brilliant  with  torches,  another  ves- 
sel entered  the  harbour  and  dropped  anchor.  She 
Columbus  and  ^as  none  other  than  the  Pinta  I  The 
Paios"  death  s^orm  had  driven  her  to  Bayonne, 
ofPinzou.  whence  Martin  Pinzon  instantly  de- 
spatched a  message  to  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  mail- 
ing great  claims  for  himself  and  asking  permission 
to  wait  upon  them  with  a  full  account  of  the  dis- 
covery. As  soon  as  practicable  he  made  his  way 
to  Palos,  but  when  on  arriving  he  saw  the  Nina 
already  anchored  in  the  harbour  his  guilty  heart 
failed  him.  He  took  advantage  of  the  general  hub- 
bub to  slink  ashore  as  quickly  and  quietly  as  pos- 
sible, and  did  not  dare  to  show  himself  until  after 
the  Admiral  had  left  for  Seville.  The  news  from 
Columbus  reached  the  sovereigns  before  they  had 
time  to  reply  to  the  message  of  Pinzon  ;  so  when 
ii  their  answer  came  to  him  it  was  cold  and  stern  and 

forbade  him  to  atjpear  in  their  presence.  Pinzon 
was  worn  out  with  the  hardships  of  the  homeward 
voyage,  and  this  crushing  reproof  was  more  than 
he  could  bear.  His  sudden  death,  a  few  days  after- 
ward, was  generally  attributed  to  chagrin.^ 

From  Seville  the  Admiral  was  summoned  to  at- 
tend court  at  Barcelona,  where  he  was  received 
with    triumphal    honours.      He   was    directed    to 

ports  of  joy."  Irving's  Co/j/miMS,  vol.  i.  p.  318.  This  is  projecting 
our  present  knowledge  into  the  past.  We  now  know  that  Columbus 
had  discovered  a  new  world.  Ho  did  not  so  much  as  suspect  that 
he  had  done  anything  of  the  sort ;  neither  did  the  people  of  Palos. 
^  Charlevoix,  Histoire  de  Visle  Espagnole,  ou  de  St.  Domingue, 
Paris,  1730,  liv.  ii. ;  MuAoz,  Ilistoiia  de  las  Indias  tf  Nuevo  Mundo, 
Madrid,  17t)3,  lib.  iv.  §  14. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


443 


seat  himself  in  the  presence  of  the  sovereigns,  a 
courtesy  usually  reserved  for  royal  per- 
sonages.^  Intense  interest  was  lelt  in  received  by 
his  specimens  ot  stufted  birds  and  small  at  Banwiona, 
mammals,  his  live  parrots,  his  collection 
of  herbs  which  he  supposed  to  have  medicinal  vir- 
tues, his  few  pearls  and  trinkets  of  gold,  and 
especially  his  six  painted  and  bedizened  barbarians, 
the  survivors  of  ten  with  whom  he  had  started 
from  Hispaniola.  Since  in  the  vague  terminology 
of  that  time  the  remote  and  scarcely  known  parts 
of  Asia  were  called  the  Indies,  and  since  the  islands 
and  coasts  just  discovered  were  Indies,  of  course 
these  red  men  must  be  Indians.  So  Columbus  had 
already  named  them  in  his  first  letter  written  from 
the  Nina,  off  the  Azores,  sent  by  special  messenger 
from  Palos,  and  now  in  April,  1493,  printed  at 
Barcelona,  containing  the  particulars  of  his  dis- 
covery, —  a  letter  appropriately  addressed  to  the 
worthy  Santangel  but  for  whose  timely  interven- 
tion he  might  have  ridden  many  a  weary  league  on 

1  He  was  also  allowed  to  quarter  the  royal  arms  with  his  own, 
"which  consisted  of  a  group  of  golden  islands  amid  azure  hil- 
lows.  To  these  were  afterwards  added  five  anchors,  with  the 
celebrated  motto,  well  known  as  being  carved  on  his  sepulchre." 
Prescott's  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  pt.  i.  chap.  vii.  This  state- 
ment about  the  motto  is  erroneous.  Wee  below,  p.  614.  Consid- 
ering the  splendour  of  the  reception  given  to  Columbus,  and  the 
great  interest  felt  in  his  achievement,  Mr.  Prescott  is  surprised  at 
finding  no  mention  of  this  occasion  in  the  local  annals  of  Barce- 
lona, or  in  the  royal  archives  of  Aragon.  He  conjectures,  with 
some  probability,  that  the  cause  of  the  omission  may  have  been 
what  an  American  would  call  "  section.al  "  jealousy.  This  Cathay 
and  Cipango  business  was  an  affair  of  Castile's,  and,  as  such,  quite 
beneath  lae  notice  of  patriotic  Aragonese  archivists !  Tliat  is  the 
way  history  has  too  often  been  treated.  With  most  people  it  is 
only  a  kind  of  ancestor  worship. 


444  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

that  mule  of  his  to  no  good  purpose.^  It  was  gener. 
ally  assumed  without  question  that  the  Admiral's 
theory  of  his  discovery  must  be  correct,  that  the 
coast  of  Cuba  must  be  the  eastern  extremity  of 
China,  that  the  coast  of  Hispaniola  must  be  the 
northern  extremity  of  Cipango,  and  that  a  direct 
route  —  much  shorter  than  that  which  Portugal 
had  so  long  been  seeking  —  had  now  been  found 
to  those  lands  of  illimitable  wealth  described 
by  Marco  Polo.'^     To  be  sure  Columbus  had  not 

'  The  unique  copy  of  this  first  edition  of  this  Spanish  letter  is 
a  small  folio  of  two  leaves,  or  four  pages.  It  was  announced  for 
sale  in  Quaritch's  Catalogue,  April  U\,  1801,  No.  Ill,  p.  47,  for 
£1,750.  Evidently  most  book-lovers  will  have  to  content  them- 
selves with  the  facsimile  published  in  London,  1801,  price  two 
guineas.  A  unique  copy  of  a  Spanish  reprint  in  small  quarto, 
made  in  1403,  is  preserved  in  the  Ambrosian  library  at  Milan. 
In  1880  Messrs.  Ellis  &  Elvey,  of  London,  published  a  facsimile 
alleged  to  have  been  made  from  an  edition  of  about  the  same  date 
as  the  Ambrosian  quarto ;  but  there  are  good  reasons  for  believ- 
ing that  these  highly  respectable  publishers  have  been  imposed 
upon.  It  is  a  time  just  now  when  fictitious  literary  discoveries  of 
this  sort  may  command  a  high  price,  and  the  dealer  in  early  Ameri- 
cana must  keep  his  eyes  open.  See  Quuritch's  note,  op.  cit.  p.  40 ; 
and  Justin  Winsor's  letter  in  The  Nation,  April  0,  1801,  vol.  lii. 
p.  208. 

^  '*  The  lands,  therefore,  which  Colnmbus  had  visited  were 
called  the  West  Indies ;  and  as  he  seemed  to  have  entered  upon  & 
vast  region  of  unexplored  countries,  existing  in  a  state  of  nature, 
the  whole  received  the  comprehensive  appellation  of  the  New 
World."  Irving's  Columbus,  vol.  i.  p.  333.  These  are  very  grave 
errors,  again  involving  the  projection  of  our  modern  knowledge 
into  the  past.  The  lands  which  Columbus  had  visited  were  called 
simply  the  Indies ;  it  was  not  until  long  after  his  death,  and  after 
the  crossing  of  the  Pacific  ocean,  that  they  were  distinguished 
from  the  East  Indies.  The  New  World  was  not  at  first  a  "  com- 
prehensive appellation "  for  the  countries  discovered  by  Colum- 
bus ;  it  was  at  first  applied  to  one  particular  region  never  visited 
by  him,  viz.  to  that  portion  of  the  southeastern  coast  of  South 
America  first  explored  by  Yespucius.    See  vol.  ii.  pp.  120, 180. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  INDIES. 


446 


as  yet  seen  the  evidences  of  this  Oriental  splen* 
dour,  and  had  been  puzzled  at  not  finding  them, 
but  he  felt  confident  that  he  had  come  very  near 
them  and  would  come  full  upon  them  in  a  second 
voyage.  There  was  nobody  who  knew  enough  to 
refute  these  opinions,^  and  really  why  should  not 
this  great  geographer,  who  had  accomplished  so 
much  already  which  people  had  scouted  (je„erai  ex- 
as  impossible,  —  why  should  he  not  the  news  that 
know  what  he  was  about?  It  was  easy  i„jfeVhad*' 
enough  now  to  get  men  and  money  for  '*®"  ^°""*** 
the  second  voyage.  When  the  Admiral  sailed 
from  Cadiz  on  September  25,  1493,  it  was  with 
seventeen  ships  carrying  1,500  men.  Their  dreams 
were  of  the  marble  palaces  of  Quinsay,  of  isles  of 
spices,  and  the  treasures  of  Pir^ter  John.  The 
sovereigns  wept  for  joy  as  they  thought  that  such 
untold  riches  were  vouchsafed  them  by  the  special 
decree  of  Heaven,  as  a  reward  for  having  over- 
come the  Moor  at  Granada  and  banished  the  Jews 
from  Spain.2     Columbus  shared  these  views  and 

^  Peter  Martyr,  however,  seems  to  have  entertained  some  vague 
doubts,  inasmuch  as  this  assumed  neamests  of  the  China  coast 
on  the  west  implied  a  greater  eastward  extension  of  the  Asiatic 
continent  than  seemed  to  him  probable  :  —  "  Insulas  reperit 
plures ;  has  esse,  de  quibus  fit  apud  cosmographos  mentio  extra 
oceauum  orientalem,  adjacentes  Indiae  arbitrantur.  Nee  inficior 
ego  penitus,  quamvis  sphcerce  magnitudo  aliter  sentire  videatur; 
neque  enim  desunt  qui  parvo  tractu  a  finibus  Hispanise  distarf 
littus  Indicum  piitent."  Opus  Epist.,  No.  135.  The  italicizing  is 
mine. 

^  This  abominable  piece  of  wickedness,  driving  200,000  of 
Spain's  best  citizens  from  their  homes  and  their  native  land,  was 
accomplished  in  pursuance  of  an  edict  signed  March  30,  1492. 
There  is  a  brief  account  of  it  in  VvesaoVC  s  Ferdinand  and  Isabellof 
pt.  i.  chap,  vi 


It 


446  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

regarded  himself  as  a  special  instrument  for  exe- 
cuting the  divine  clecrees.  He  renewed  his  vow- 
to  rescue  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  promising  within 
the  next  seven  years  to  equip  at  his  own  expense  a 
crusading  army  of  50,000  foot  and  4,000  horse ; 
within  five  years  thereafter  he  would  follow  this 
with  a  second  army  of  like  dimensions. 

Thus  nobody  had  the  faintest  suspicion  of  what 
had  been  done.  In  the  famous  letter  to  Santangel 
there  is  of  course  not  a  word  about  a  New  World. 
The  grandeur  of  the  achievement  was  quite  beyond 
the  ken  of  the  generation  that  witnessed  it.  For 
This  voyage  ^^  ^^^^  ^^^^^  ^omc  to  learn  that  in  1492 
witiroutl^!^*  *he  contact  between  the  eastern  and  the 
Crjl'"  western  halves  of  our  planet  whs  first 
really  begun,  and  the  two  streams  of 
human  life  which  had  flowed  on  for  countless  ages  I 

apart  were  thenceforth  to  mingle  together.     The  I 

first  voyage  of  Columbus  is  thus  a  unique  event  in 
the  history  of  mankind.  Nothing  like  it  was  ever 
done  before,  and  nothing  like  it  can  ever  be  done 
again.  No  worlds  are  left  for  a  future  Columbus 
to  conquer.  The  era  of  which  tliis  great  Italian 
mariner  was  the  most  illu;;trious  representative  has 
closed  forever. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS, 

But  that  era  did  not  close  with  Columbus,  nop 
did  he  live  long  enough  to  complete  the  Discovery 
of  America.  Our  practice  of  affixing  specific 
dates  to  great  events  is  or  many  accounts  indis- 
pensable, but  it  is  sometimes  mislead-  „„    ^. 

•I  '  The  Discov- 

inff.     Such  an  event  as  the  discovery  of  eryof  America 

o  •'  was  a  gradual 

a  pair  of  vast  continents  does  not  take  pi'oceBs. 
place  within  a  single  year.  When  we  speak  of 
America  as  discovered  in  1492,  we  do  not  mean 
that  the  moment  Columbus  landed  on  two  or  three 
islands  of  the  West  Indies,  a  full  outline  map  of 
the  western  liemisphere  from  Labrador  and  Alaska 
to  Cape  Horn  suddenly  sprang  into  existence  — 
like  Pallas  from  the  forehead  of  Zeus  —  in  the 
minds  of  European  men.  Yet  people  are  perpet- 
ually using  arguments  which  have  neither  force  nor 
meaning  save  upon  the  tacit  assumption  that  some- 
how or  other  some  such  sort  of  thing  must  have 
happened.  This  grotesque  fallacy  lies  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  tradition  which  has  caused  so  many 
foolish  tilings  to  be  said  about  that  gallant  mari- 
ner, Americus  Vespucius.  In  geographical  discus- 
sions the  tendency  to  overlook  the  fact  that  Co- 
lumbus ind  his  immediate  successors  did  not  sail 
with  the  latest  edition  of  Black's  General  Atlas  in 


448  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA, 

their  cabins  ia  almost  inveterate  ;  it  keeps  reyeal- 
ing  itself  in  all  sorts  of  queer  statements,  and 
probably  there  is  no  cure  for  it  except  in  famil- 
iarity with  the  long  series  of  perplexed  and  strug- 
ling  maps  made  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Properly 
regarded,  the  Discovery  of  America  was  not  a 
j  single  event,  but  a  very  gradual  process.     It  was 

i  not  like  a  case  of  special  creation,  for  it  was  a  case 

of  evolution,  and  the  voyage  of  1492  was  simply 
the  most  decisive  and  epoch-marking  incident  in 
that  evolution.  Columbus  himself,  after  all  his 
four  eventful  voyages  across  the  Sea  of  Darkness, 
died  in  the  belief  that  he  had  simply  discovered 
the  best  and  straightest  route  to  the  eastern  shores 
of  Asia.  Yet  from  his  first  experiences  in  Cuba 
down  to  his  latest  voyage  upon  the  coasts  of  Hon- 
duras and  Veragua,  he  was  more  or  less  puzzled 
at  finding  things  so  different  from  what  he  had 
anticipated.  If  he  had  really  known  anything  with 
accuracy  about  the  eastern  coast  of  Asia,  he  would 
doubtless  soon  have  detected  his  fundamental  error, 
||.,;  but  no  European  in  his  day  had  any  such  know- 

'  ledge.     In  his  four  voyages  Columbus  was  finding 

what  he  supposed  to  be  parts  of  Asia,  what  we 
now  know  to  have  been  parts  of  America,  but  what 
were  really  to  him  and  his  contemporaries  neither 
more  nor  less  than  Strange  Coasts.  We  have  now 
to  consider  briefly  his  further  experiences  upon 
these  strange  coasts. 

The  second  voyage  of  Columbus  was  begun  in  a 
very  different  mood  and  under  very  different  aus. 
pices  from  either  his  former  or  his  two  subsequent 


-  'A-v.'.^  .  1  mO.!^  1   *  J^.l.i"-yjmff  g_f  -  l-   ■'!  - 


L 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     449 

voyages.  On  his  first  departure  from  Palos,  in 
1492,  all  save  a  few  devoted  friends  regarded  him 
as  a  madman  rushing  upon  his  doom ;  and  outside 
the  Spanish  peninsula  the  expedition  seems  to 
have  attracted  no  notice.  But  on  the  second  start, 
in  1493,  all  hands  supposed  that  they  were  going 
straight  to  golden  Cathay  and  to  boundless  riches. 
It  was  not  now  with  groans  but  with  paeans  that 
they  flocked  on  board  the  ships ;  and  the  occasion 
was  observed,  with  more  or  less  interest,  by  some 
people  in  other  coimtries  of  Europe,  —  as  in  Italy, 
and  for  the  moment  in  France  and  England. 

At  the  same  time  with  his  letter  to  Santangel, 
the  Admiral  had  despatched  another  account,  sub- 
stantially the  same,^  to  Gabriel  Sanchez,^  ^he  letter  to 
another  officer  of  the  royal  treasury.  «»"«^«^- 
Several  copies  of  a  Latin  translation  of  this  letter 
were  published  at  Rome,  at  Paris,  and  elsewhere, 
in  the  course  of  the  year  1493.3     The  story  which 

1  "Un  duplicata  de  cette  relation,"  Harrisse,  Christophe  Colombo 

torn  i.  p.  419. 

-  Often  called  Raphael  Sanchez. 

8  The  following  epigram  was  added  to  the  first  Latin  edition  ol 
the  latter  by  Corbaria,  Bishop  of  Monte-Peloso :  — 

Ad  Invictissimum  Regem  Ilispaniarum  : 
lam  nulla  Hispanis  tellus  addenda  triumphia, 

Atque  parum  tantis  viribua  orbis  erat. 
Nunc  longe  eois  rej?io  deprensa  sub  undis, 

Auctura  est  titulos  Betice  ,  lagne  tuos. 
TJnde  repertori  incrita  refer    .da  Columbo 

Gratia,  sed  sinnmo  est  niaior  habenda  deo, 
Qui  vincenda  par.it  noua  repia  tibique  sibiquo 

Teque  simul  fortem  prestat  et  ease  pium. 

These  lines  are  thus  paraplirased  by  M.  Harrisse  :  — 

To  the  Invineihle  King  of  the  Spains: 
Less  wide  tlie  world  tlian  the  renown  of  Spain, 
To  swell  her  triumphs  no  new  lands  t     ..  "". 


450  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

it  contained  was  at  once  paraphrased  in  Italian 
verse  by  Giuliano  Dati,  one  of  the  most  popidar 
poets  of  the  age,  and  perhaps  in  the  autumn 
of  1493  the  amazing  news  that  the  Indies  had 
been  found  by  sailing  west  ^   was  sung  by  street 

Rejo  ce,  Iberia !  see  thy  fame  increased  I 
Another  world  ColumbuH  from  tlie  East 
And  the  mid-oceau  summons  to  thy  sway  i 
Give  thanks  to  liim  — but  loftier  homage  pay 
To  God  Supreme,  who  gives  its  realms  to  thee  J 
Greatest  of  monarchs,  first  of  servants  be  I 

Bibliotheca  Americana  Vetnslissinta,  p.  13, 
The  following  is  a  literal  version  :  —  "  Already  tliere  is  no  land 
to  be  added  to  the  triumphs  of  Sp  lin,  and  the  earth  was  too  small 
for  such  great  deeds.  Now  a  far  country  under  the  eastern  waves 
has  been  discovered,  and  will  be  an  addition  to  tliy  titles,  O  great 
Bffitica !  wherefore  thanks  are  due  to  the  illustrious  discover  Co- 
lumbus ;  but  greater  thanks  to  the  supreme  God,  who  is  making 
ready  new  realms  to  bo  conquered  for  thee  and  for  Himself,  and 
vouchsafes  to  thee  to  be  at  once  strong  and  pious."  It  will  be 
o?J8erved  that  nothing  is  said  about  "another  world." 

An  elaborate  account  of  these  earliest  and  excessively  rare  edi- 
tions  is  given  by  M.  Harrisse,  loc.  cit. 

1  Or,  as  Mr.  Major  carelessly  puts  it,  "  the  astounding  news  of 
the  discovery  of  a  new  world."  {Select  Letters  of  Columbus,  p.  vi.) 
Mr.  Major  knows  very  well  that  no  such  "  news  "  was  possible  for 
many  a.  year  after  1493 ;  his  remark  is,  of  course,  a  mere  slip  of 
the  pen,  but  if  we  are  ever  going  to  straighten  out  the  tangle  of 
misconceptions  with  which  this  subject  is  commonly  surrounded, 
we  must  be  careful  in  our  choice  of  words.  —  As  a  fair  specimen 
of  the  chap-book  style  of  Dati's  stanzas,  we  may  cite  the  four- 
teenth :  — 

Hor  vo  tornar  almio  primo  tractate 
dellisole  trovate  incognito  a  te 
In  qsto  anno  presente  qsto  e  stato 
nel  millequatroceuto  novatatre, 
uno  chs  xgofan  colobo  chiamato, 
che  e  stato  in  corte  der  prefeeto  Re 
ha  molte  volte  questa  stimolato, 
el  Re  ch'cerohi  aorescere  il  suo  stato. 

M.  Harrisse  gives  the  following  version:  — 

Back  to  my  tlieme,  0  Listener,  turn  with  m» 
And  hear  of  it>laudB  all  uukuowu  to  chee  I 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      451 

urchins  in  Florence.  We  are  also  informed,  in 
an  ill-vouched  but  not  improbable  clause  in  Ra- 
musio,  that  not  far  from  that  same  time  the  news 
was  heard  with  admiration  in  London,  where  it 
was  pronounced  "  a  thing  more  divine  than  hu- 
man to  sail  by  the  West  unto  the  East,  where 
spices  grow,  by  a  way  that  was  never  known  be- 
fore ; "  ^  and  it  seems  altogether  likely  that  it  was 
this  news  that  prompted  the  expedition  of  John 
Cabot  hereafter  to  be  mentioned.^ 

The  references  to  the  discovery  are  very  scanty, 
however,  until  after  the  year  1500,  and  extremely 
vague  withal.    For  example,  Bernardino  de  Carva* 
jal,  the  Spanish  ambassador  at  the  papal  court,  de* 
livered  an  oration  in  Kome  on  June  19,  1493,  in 
which  he  said :  "  And  Christ  placed  under  theif 
[Ferdinand  and  Isabella's]  rule  the  For- 
tunate [Canary]  islands,  the  fertility  of  ences  to  the 
which  has  been  ascertained  to  be  won-    '*''°^®''^" 
derful.      And  he  has  lately  disclosed  some  othef 
unknown  ones  towards  the  Indies  which  may  be 
considered   among   the   most   precious   things   on 
earth ;  and  it  is  believed  that  they  wiU  be  gained 

Islands  whereof  the  grand  diaoovery 
Chanced  in  this  year  of  fourteen  ninety-three. 
One  Christopher  Colombo,  whose  resort 
Was  ever  in  the  Khig  Femaiulo's  court, 
Bent  liimself  still  to  rouse  and  sfimnlate 
The  King  to  swell  tlie  borders  of  his  State. 

Jiiblinthecn  Americana  Vetuxtissima,  p.  29. 

The  entire  poem  of  sixty-eig'lit  stanzas  is  given  in  Major,  op.  cit. 
pp.  Ixxiii.-xo.  It  was  published  at  Florence,  Oct.  26,  1493,  and 
was  called  "  the  story  of  the  discovery  [not  of  a  new  world,  but] 
of  the  new  Indian  islands  of  Canary!  "  {Storia  della  inventions 
ielle  nuove  isole  dicanaria  inJianc) 

^  Raccolta  di  Navigazioni,  etc.,  Venice,  1550,  torn.  i.  fol.  414. 

2  See  below,  vol.  ii.  pp.  2-15. 


462  THE  DISCOVEBY  OF  AMERICA  , 

over  to  Christ  by  the  emissaries  of  the  king."' 
Outside  of  the  Romance  countries  we  find  one  Ger- 
man version  of  the  first  letter  of  Columbus,  pub- 
lished at  Strasburg,  in  1497,^  and  a  brief  allusion 
to  the  discovery  in  Sebastian  Brandt's  famous 
allegorical  poem,  "Das  Narrenschiff,"  the  first 
edition  of  which  appeared  in  1494.^  The  earliest 
distinct  reference  to  Columbus  in  the  English  Ian- 
guage  is  to  be  found  in  a  translation  of  this  poem, 
"  The  Shyppe  of  Fooles,"  by  Henry  Watson,  pub- 
lished in  London  by  Wynkyn  de  Worde  in  1509. 
The  purpose  of  Brandt's  allegrorv  was 

Earliest  refer-  .  o      j 

ence  in  Eng-    to  Satirize  the  follies  committed  by  all 

sorts  and  conditions  of   men.     In  the 

chapter,  "  Of  hym  that  wyll  wryte  and  enquere  of 

all  regyons,"   it  is  said:   "There   was   one   that 

^  Harrisse,  Bibltotheca  Americana  Vetustissima,  p.  35. 
2  Id.  p.  50. 

«  Auch  hat  man  sydt  in  Portigall 
Und  in  Hyspanyen  uberall 
Oolt-inselu  funden,  und  nacket  Ifit 
Von  den  man  vor  wust  Bagen  nfit. 

Harrisse,  Bibl.  Amer.  Vet. ;  AddUionSf  p.  4. 

Or,  In  more  modem  German :  — 

Wie  man  aucli  jtingst  von  Portugal 
Und  nispanien  aus  schier  Uberall 
Goldinseln  fand  und  nakte  Leute, 
Von  denen  man  erst  weiss  eeit  lieute. 

Das  Narrenschiff,  ed.  Simrock,  Berlin,  1872,  p.  161. 

In  the  Latin  version  of  1497,  now  in  the  National  Library  at 
Paris,  it  goes  somewhat  differently :  — 

Antea  qu^  f  uerat  priscis  incognita  tellus : 

Exposita  est  oculis  &  manifesta  patet. 
Hesperi^  occidu^  rex  Ferdinandus :  in  alto 
Aequore  nunc  gentes  repperit  innumeras. 

Harrisse,  op.  cit. ;  Additions,  p.  7. 

It  will  be  observed  that  these  foreiji-n  references  are  so  ungal« 
Jant,  and  so  incorrect,  as  to  give  all  the  credit  to  Ferdinand,  while 
poor  Isabella  is  not  mentioned  I 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     453 

knewe  that  in  y®  ysles  of  Spayne  was  enhab' (antes. 
Wherefore  he  asked  men  of  Kynge  Ferdynandus 
&  wente  &  founde  them,  the  whiche  lyved  as 
beestes."  ^  CJntil  after  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century  no  English  chronicler  mentions  either  Co- 
lumbus or  the  Cabots,  nor  is  there  anywhere  an 
indication  that  the  significance  of  the  discoveries 
in  the  western  ocean  was  at  all  understood.^ 

North  of  the  Alps  and  Pyrenees  the  interest  in 
what  was  going  on  at  the  Spanish  court  in  1493 
was  probably  confined  to  very  few  people.  As  for 
Venice  and  Genoa  we  have  no  adequate  means  of 
knowing  how  they  felt  about  the  matter,  —  a  fact 
which  in  itself  is  significant.  The  interest  was 
centred  in  Spain  and  Portugal.  There  it  was  in- 
tense and  awakened  fierce  heart-burnings.  Though 
John  II.  had  not  given  his  consent  to  the  proposal 
for  murdering  Columbus,  he  appears  to  have  seri- 
ously entertained  the  thought  of  send- 

•  nn  -I         A    ^         •  Portuguese 

mg  a  small  fleet  across  the  Atlantic  as  <  laim  to  the 
soon  as  possible,  to  take  possession  of 
some  point  in  Cathay  or  Cipango  and  then  dis- 
pute the  claims  of  the  Spaniards.^  Such  a  sum. 
mary  proceeding  might  i)erhaps  be  defended  on 
the  ground  that  the  grant  from  Pope  Eugenius  V. 
to  the  crown  of  Portugal  expressly  included  "  the 
Indies."  In  the  treaty  of  1479,  moreover,  Spain 
had  promised  not  to  interfere  with  the  discoveries 
and  possessions  of  the  Portuguese. 

But  whatever  King  John  may  have  intended, 

1  Harrisse,  op.  cit. ;  Additions,  p.  45. 

2  Harrisse,  Jean  et  Sebastieti  Cabot,  Paris,  1882,  p.  15. 

8  Vasuoucellos,   Vida  del  Bey  Don  Juan  II.,  Madrid,  1638^ 
lib.  tI. 


454  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA.  ^ 

Ferdinand  and  Isabella  were  too  quick  for  liim.  No 
sooner  had  Columbus  arrived  at  Barcelona  than 
an  embassy  was  despatched  to  liome,  asking  for  a 
grant  of  the  Indies  just  discovered  by  that  navi- 
gator in  the  service  of  Castile.  The  notorious 
Kodrigo  Borgia,  who  had  lately  been  placed  in  the 
apostolic  chair  as  Alexander  VI.,  was  a  native  of 
Valencia  in  the  kingdom  of  Aragon,  and  wot  Id 
not  be  likely  to  refuse  such  a  request  through  any 
excess  of  regard  for  Portugal.  As  between  the 
two  rival  powers  the  pontiii's  arrangement  was 
Bulls  of  Po  e  ^^^^^  "^  ^  spirit  of  even-handed  justice. 
AiexunderT?.  Qu  tlic  3d  of  May,  1493,  he  issued  a 
bull  conferring  upon  the  Spanish  sovereigns  all 
lands  already  discovered  or  thereafter  to  be  discov- 
ered in  the  western  ocean,  with  jurisdiction  and 
privileges  in  all  respects  similar  to  those  formerly 
bestowed  upon  the  crown  of  Portugal.  This  grant 
was  made  by  the  pope  "  out  of  our  pure  liberality, 
certain  knowledge,  and  ])lenitude  of  apostolic  pow- 
er," and  by  virtue  of  "  the  authority  of  omni])otent 
God  granted  to  us  in  St.  Peter,  and  of  the  Vicar- 
ship  of  Jesus  Christ  which  we  administer  upon 
the  earth."  ^  It  was  a  substantial  reward  for  the 
monarchs  who  had  completed  the  overthrow  of 
Mahometan  rule  in  Spain,  and  it  afforded  them 

"*  "  De  nostra  mera  liberalitate,  et  ex  certa  scientia,  ac  de  apos- 
tolicie  potestatis  plenitndiiie."  .  .  •  "  aiictoritate  omnipotentis  Dei 
nobis  in  beato  Petro  concessa,  ac  vicariatus  Jesu  Christi  qua  f  un- 
giniur  in  iHrris."  The  same  lanfjnage  is  used  in  the  second  bull. 
Mr.  Prescott  {Ferdinand  ami  Isabella,  part  i.  chap,  vii.)  translates 
certa  scientia  "  infallible  kno\vledjj;'e,"  but  in  order  to  avoid  any 
complications  with  modern  theories  coucerning  papal  infallibilityj 
I  prefer  to  use  a  less  technical  word. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     455 

opportunities  for  further  good  work  in  converting 
the  heathen  inhabitants  of  the  islands  and  main- 
land of  Asia.^ 

On  the  following  day  Alexander  issued  a  second 
bull  in  order  to  prevent  any  occasion  for  quarrel 
between  Spain  and  Portugal.^     He  decreed  that 

^  A  year  or  two  later  the  sovereigns  were  further  rewarded 
with  the  decorative  title  of  '"Most  Catholic."  See  Zurl  a,  His' 
toria  del  Bey  Hernando,  Saragossa,  15S0,  lib.  ii.  cap.  xl. ;  Peter 
Martyr,  Epist.  clvii. 

•^  The  complete  text  of  this  bull,  with  Richard  Eden's  transla- 
tion, is  given  at  the  end  of  this  work ;  see  below.  Appendix  B. 
The  official  text  is  in  Magnum  Bullarium  liomanum,  ed.  Cheru- 
bini,  Lyons,  1G55,  torn.  i.  p.  40G.  The  original  document  received 
by  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  is  preserved  in  the  Archives  of  the 
Indies  at  Seville  ;  it  is  printed  entire  in  Navarrete,  Coleccion  de 
viages,  torn.  ii.  No.  IS.  Another  copy,  less  complete,  may  be 
found  in  Raynaldus,  Annales  ecclesiastici,  Lucca,  1754,  torn.  xi. 
p.  214,  No.  19-22  ;  and  another  in  Leibnitz,  Codex  iJiplomaticus, 
tom.  i.  pt.  i,  p.  471.  It  is  often  called  the  Bull  ''  Inter  Cetera," 
from  its  opening  words. 

The  origin  of  tlie  pope's  claim  to  apostolic  authority  for  giving 
away  kingdoms  is  closely  connected  with  the  fictitious  "Donation 
of  Constantino,"  an  edict  probably  fabricated  in  Rome  about  the 
middle  of  the  eighth  century.  The  title  of  the  old  Latin  text  is 
Edictum  domini  Constantini  Imp.,  apud  Pseudo-Isidorns,  DecretO' 
lia.  Constantine's  transfer  of  the  seat  of  empire  from  the  Tiber 
to  the  Bosphorus  tended  greatly  to  increase  the  dignity  and  power 
of  the  papacy,  and  I  presume  that  the  fabrication  of  this  edict, 
four  centuries  afterward,  was  the  expression  of  a  sincere  belief 
that  the  tirst  Christian  emperor  meant  to  lea\e  tlie  temporal  su- 
premacy over  Italy  in  tlie  hands  of  the  Roman  see.  The  edic'. 
purported  to  be  such  a  donation  from  Constantine  to  Pope  Sylves- 
ter I.,  but  the  extent  and  cliaracter  of  the  donation  was  stated 
with  such  vagueness  as  to  allow  a  wide  latitude  of  interpretation. 
Its  genuineness  was  repeatedly  called  in  question,  but  belief  in  it 
seems  to  have  grown  in  strength  until  after  the  thirteenth  century. 
Leo  IX.,  who  was  a  strong  believer  in  its  genuineness,  granted  in 
1054  to  the  Normans  their  conquests  in  Sicily  and  Calabria,  to  be 
held  as  a  fief  of  the  Roman  see.  (Muratori,  Annali  rf'  Italia, 
tom.  vi.  pt.  ii.  p.  245.)      It  was  next  used  to  sustain  the  papal 


466  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

all  lands  discovered  or  to  be  discovered  to  the 
West  of  a  meridian  one  liundred  leagues  west  of 

elaim  to  siizerainty  over  the  iHland  of  Corsica.  A  century  later 
John  of  ISalishury  maintained  the  right  of  the  pope  to  dispose  "  of 
all  islands  on  which  Christ,  the  Sun  of  righteousness,  hath  shined," 
and  in  conformity  with  this  opinion  Pope  Adrian  IV.  (Nicholas 
iJreakspeare,  an  Eng'Hshman)  authorized  in  11()4  King  Henry  II. 
of  England  to  invade  and  conquer  Ireland.  (See  Adrian  IV., 
Epist.  70,  apud  Migne,  Patroloyia,  toni.  clxxxviii.)  Dr.  Lanigan, 
in  treating  of  this  matter,  is  more  an  Irishman  tlian  a  papist,  and 
derides  "  this  nonsense  of  the  pope's  heing  the  head-owner  of  all 
Christian  islands."  {Ecclesiastical  History  of  Ireland,  vol.  iv.  p. 
15}).)  —  Gregory  VII.,  in  working  up  to  the  doctrine  that  all 
Christian  kingdoms  should  he  held  as  fiefs  under  St.  Peter  (Baro- 
nius,  Annales,  tom.  xvii.  p.  4.30 ;  cf .  Villemain,  Ilistoire  de  Gri- 
fjoire  VII-,  Paris,  1878,  tom.  ii.  pp.  59-()l),  does  not  seem  to  have 
appealed  to  the  Donation.  Perhaps  he  was  shrewd  enough  to 
foresee  the  kind  of  objection  afterwards  raised  by  the  Albigen- 
sians,  who  pithily  declared  that  if  the  suzerainty  of  tlie  popes  was 
derived  from  the  Donation,  then  they  were  successors  of  Const.an- 
tine  and  not  of  St.  Peter.  (Moneta  Cremonensis,  Adversus  Catha- 
ros  et  Waldenses,  ed.  Ricchini,  Rome,  174;3,  v.  2.)  But  Innocent 
IV.  summarily  disposed  of  tliis  argument  at  the  Council  of  Lyons 
in  124.'),  when  he  deposed  the  Emperor  Frederick  ^I.  and  King 
Sancho  II.  of  Portugal,  —  saying  that  Christ  himself  had  bestowed 
temporal  as  well  as  spiritual  headship  upon  St.  Petev  and  his  suc- 
cessors, so  that  Constantine  only  gave  up  to  the  Church  what 
beloiiged  to  it  already.  The  opposite  or  Glilbelline  theory  was 
eloquently  set  forth  by  Dante,  in  his  treatise  De  Monarchia ;  he 
held  that  inasmuch  as  the  Empire  existed  before  the  Church,  it 
could  not  be  derived  from  it.  Dante  elsewhere  expressed  his 
abhorrence  of  the  Donation:  — 

Ahi  Constantin,  di  quanto  mal  fu  matre, 
Non  la  tua  conversion,  rna  quella  dote 
Che  da  te  preae  il  primo  ricco  patre ! 

Ivferno,  xlx.  115. 

Similar  sentiments  were  expressed  by  many  of  the  most  popular 
poets  from  the  twelfth  century  to  the  sixteenth.  Walther  von 
(Jer  Vogelweide  was  sure  that  if  the  first  Christian  emperor  could 
have  foreseen  the  evils  destined  to  flow  from  his  Donation,  be 
Would  have  withheld  it :  — 


i 


THE  FIXDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     457 

the  Azores  and  Cape  Verde  Islands  shoidd  belong 
to   the    Spaniards.      Inasmuch    as    between    the 

Solte  Ich  den  pfaffen  raten  an  den  triuwen  min, 
So  ipra'clie  ir  hunt  den  armen  zdo  :  He,  daz  ist  din, 
Ir  ivLugo  Biinge,  unde  lieze  menKein  man  daz  sin, 
Oedivhten  daz  ouch  si  dur  Got  wirren  almuosenaere. 
Do  gab  ir  erate  teil  der  Kuenik  KonRtantln, 
Het  er  gewest,  daz  da  von  uebel  kuenftik  wwre, 
So  hot  er  wol  undcrkoinen  des  riches  swipre, 
Wan  daz  si  do  waren  kiunche,  und  ueberiniiete  l-rre. 

Hagen,  Minnesinger-Snmmlung,  Leipsic,  1838,  bd.  !.  p.  270l 

Ariosto,  in  a  passage  rolliekiiiff  with  satire,  makes  his  itinerant 
paladin  find  the  "  stinking  "  Donation  in  the  course  of  his  journey 
upon  the  moon :  — 

Di  varii  fiori  ad  uu  gran  monte  passa, 
Ch'  ebber  gi^  buono  odors,  or  piizzan  forte, 
Qnesto  era  il  douo,  se  per6  dir  lece, 
Che  Constantino  al  buon  Silvestro  fece. 

Orlando  Furioso,  xxziv.  80. 

The  Donation  was  finally  proved  to  be  a  forgery  by  Laurentiua 
Valla  in  1140,  in  his  Defalso  credita  et  ementita  Constantini  dona- 
tione  declamatio  (afterward  spread  far  and  wide  by  Ulrich  von 
Hutten),  and  independently  by  the  noble  Reginald  Pecock,  bishop 
of  Chichester,  in  his  Repressor^  written  about  1447.  —  During  the 
preceding  century  the  theory  of  Gregory  VII.  and  Innocent  IV. 
liad  been  carried  to  its  utteniiosi  extreme  by  the  Franciscan  monk 
Alvaro  Pelayo,  in  his  De  Planctu  Ecclesice,  written  at  Avignon 
during  the  "  Babylonish  Captivity,"  about  I^'jO  (printed  at  Venice 
in  1500),  and  by  Agostino  Trionfi,  in  his  Summa  de  potestate  ecclc' 
siastica,  Augsburg,  1473,  an  excessively  rare  book,  of  which  there 
is  a  copy  in  the  British  Museum.  These  writers  maintained  that 
the  popes  were  suzerains  of  the  whole  earth  and  had  absolute 
power  to  dispose  not  only  of  all  Christian  kingdoms,  but  also  of 
all  heathen  lands  and  powers.  It  was  upon  this  theory  that  Eu- 
genius  IV.  seems  to  have  acted  with  reference  to  Portugal  and 
Alexander  VI.  with  reference  to  Spain.  Of  course  there  was  never 
a  time  when  such  claims  for  the  papacy  were  not  denied  by  a 
lai^e  party  within  the  Church.  The  Spanish  sovereigns  in  ap- 
pealing to  Alexander  VI.  took  care  to  hint  that  some  of  their 
advisers  regarded  them  as  already  entitled  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of 
their  discoveries,  even  before  obtaining  the  papal  permission,  but 
they  did  not  choose  to  act  upon  that  opinion  (Herrera,  decad.  L 


t 


hi 

m 


458  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

westernmost  of  the  Azores  and  the  easternmost 
of  tlie  Cape  Verde  group  the  difference  in  longi- 
tude is  not  far  from  ten  degrees,  this  de8eri[)tion 
must  be  allowed  to  be  somewhat  vague,  especially 
in  a  docmnent  emanating  from  "certain  know- 
lib,  ii.  cap.  4).  The  kinps  of  Portiipnl  were  less  reserved  in  their 
submission.  In  Valasri  FerdiiKtiidi  ad  lutiorentmm  octnuum  de 
ohedifiitia  oratio,  a  small  iiiarto  printed  at  Rome  about  1488, 
John  II.  did  homajje  to  the  poj)e  for  tlie  countries  just  discovered 
by  Bartholomew  Dias.  Ilis  sjiccessor  Emanuel  did  the  s.anie  after 
the  voyages  of  Gama  and  Vespucius.  In  a  small  quarto,  Obedien- 
tia  potentissiini  Emanuelis  Lusitanice  regis  ^'c,  per  clarissimum  juris 
consultian  Dlajlmm  Parittii  oratorem  ad  luliu  Pout.  Max.,  Rome, 
150.'),  all  tlie  newly  found  lands  are  laid  at  the  feet  of  Julius  II. 
in  a  pass.age  that  ends  with  words  worth  noting :  "  Accipe  tan- 
dem orbem  ipsum  terrarum,  Deus  enim  noster  es,"  i.  e.  "Accept 
in  fine  the  earth  itself,  for  thou  art  our  God."  Similar  homage 
was  rendered  to  Leo  X.  in  151!},  on  account  of  Albuquerque's  con- 
quests in  Asia.  —  We  may  suspect  that  if  the  papacy  had  retained, 
it  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  anything  like  the  oversiiadow- 
ing  power  wliich  it  possessed  at  the  end  of  the  twelfth,  the  kings 
of  Portugal  would  not  h.ave  been  quite  so  unstinted  in  their 
homage.  As  it  came  to  be  le.ss  of  a  reality  and  more  of  a  flourish 
of  words,  it  cost  less  to  offer  it.  Among  some  modern  Catholics 
I  have  observed  a  disposition  to  imagine  that  in  the  famous  bull 
of  partition  Alexander  VI-  acted  not  as  supreme  pontiff  but 
merely  as  an  arbiter,  in  the  modern  sense,  between  the  crowns  of 
Spain  and  Portugal ;  but  such  an  interpretation  is  hardly  com- 
patible with  Alexander's  own  words.  An  arbiter,  as  such,  does 
not  make  awards  by  virtue  of  "  the  authority  of  Omnipotent  God 
granted  to  us  in  St.  Peter,  and  of  the  Vicarship  of  Jesus  Christ 
which  we  administer  tipon  the  earth." 

Since  writing  this  note  my  attention  has  been  called  to  Dr.  Ignaz 
von  Diillinger's  Fables  respecting  the  Popes  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
London,  1871  ;  and  I  find  in  it  a  cliapter  on  the  Donation  of  Con- 
stantine,  in  which  the  subject  is  treated  with  a  wealth  of  learning. 
Bome  of  my  brief  references  are  there  discussed  at  considerable 
Jength.  To  the  references  to  Dante  there  is  added  a  still  more 
striking  passage,  where  Constantine  is  admitted  into  Heaven  in 
tpite  of  his  Donation  (Paradiso,  xx.  55). 


: 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     459 

ledge  ; "  ^  and  it  It'ft  open  a  sonrce  of  future  dis- 
putes which  one  woukl  suppose  the  "  plenitude  of 
apostolic  power  '*  might  have  been  worthily  em- 
ployed in  closing.  The  meridian  25°  W.,  however, 
would  have  satisfied  the  conditions,  and  the  equi- 
table intent  of  the  arrangement  is  manifest.  The 
Portuguese  were  left  free  to  pursue  their  course  of 
discovery  and  conquest  along  the  routes  which 
they  had  ^vvays  preferred.  King  John,  however, 
was  not  satisfied.  He  entertained  vague  hopes  of 
finding  spice  islands,  or  something  worth  having, 
in  the  western  waters  ;  and  he  wished  to  have  the 
Line  of  Demarcation  carried  farther  to  the  west. 
After  a  year  of  diplomatic  wrangling  a  ^^.^ .  ^^ 
treaty  was  signed  at  Tordesillas,  June  Tordesiuaa. 
7, 1494,  in  wlii(di  Spain  consented  to  the  moving  of 
the  line  to  a  distance  of  370  leagues  west  from  the 
Cape  Verde  islands.^  It  would  thus  on  a  modern 
map  fall  somewhere  between  the  41st  and  44th 
meridians  west  of  Greenwich.  This  amendment 
had  important  and  curious  consequences.  It  pres- 
ently gave  the  Brazilian  coast  to  the  Portuguese, 
and  thereupon  played  a  leading  part  in  the  singu- 
lar and  comj)licated  series  of  events  that  ended  in 
giving  the  name  of  Amcricus  Vespucius  to  that 

^  The  language  of  the  bull  is  even  more  vague  than  my  versioi 
in  the  text.  His  Holiness  deRcribes  the  lands  to  be  given  to  the 
Spaniards  as  lying  "  to  the  west  and  south  "  (versus  occidentem  et 
meridiem)  of  his  dividing  meridian.  Land  to  the  south  of  a  merid- 
ian would  be  in  a  queer  position !  Probably  it  wtia  meant  to  say 
that  the  Spaniards,  once  west  of  the  papal  meridian,  might  go 
south  as  well  as  north.  For  the  king  of  Portugal  had  suggested 
that  they  ought  to  confine  themselves  to  northern  waters. 

2  For  the  original  Spanish  text  of  the  treaty  of  Tordesillas,  see 
Navarrete,  torn.  ii.  pp.  110-130. 


460  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA.  ^ 

region,  whence  it  was   afterwards  gradually  ex- 
tended to  the  whole  western  hemisphere.^ 

Already  in  April,  1493,  without  waiting  for  the 
papal  sanction,  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  bent  all 
iheir  energies  to  the  work  of  fitting  out  an  expedi- 
tion for  taking  possession  of  "  the  Indies."  First, 
a  department  of  Indian  affairs  was  created,  and  at 
„  ,  .      its  head  was  placed  Juan  Rodriguez  de 

Juan  Ronri-  '  p       o       •  1 1  • 

guez  de  Fon-  Fouscca,  archdcacon  of  Seville :  in 
Spain  a  man  in  high  office  was  apt  to 
be  a  clergyman.  This  Fonseca  was  all-powerful 
in  Indian  affairs  for  the  next  thirty  years.  He 
won  and  retained  the  confidence  of  the  sovereigns 
by  virtue  of  his  executive  ability.  He  was  a  man 
of  coarse  fibre,  ambitious  and  domineering,  cold- 
hearted  and  perfidious,  with  a  cynical  contempt  — 
such  as  low-minded  people  are  apt  to  call  "  smart  " 
—  for  the  higher  human  feelings.  He  was  one 
of  those  ugly  customers  who  crush,  without  a 
twinge  of  compunction,  whatever  comes  in  their 
way.  The  slightest  opposition  made  him  furious, 
and  his  vindictiveness  was  insatiable.  This  dex- 
terous and  pushing  Fonseca  held  one  after  another 
the  bishoprics  of  Badajoz,  Cordova,  Palencia,  and 
Conde,  the  archbishopric  of  Rosano  in  Italy,  to- 
gether with  tlie  bishopric  of  Burgos,  and  he  was 
also  principal  chaplain  to  Isabella  and  afterwards 
to  Ferdinand.  As  Sir  Arthur  Helps  observes, 
"  the  student  of  early  American  history  wiU  have 
a  bad  opinion  of  many  Spanish  bishops,  if  he  does 
not  discover  that  it  is  Bishop  Fonseca  who  reap 

1  See  below,  vol.  ii.  pp.  98-154 


TEE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     461 

pears  under  various  designations."  *     Sir  Arthur 
fitly  calls  him  "  the  ungodly  bishop." 

The  headquarters  of  Fonseca  and  of  the  Indian 
department  were  established  at  Seville,  and  a  SpS" 
cial  Indian  custom-house  was  set  up  at  Cadiz. 
There  was  to  bo  another  custom-house  upon  the 
island  of  Hispaniola  (supposed  to  be  Japan),  and 
a  minute  registry  was  to  be  kept  of  all  ships  and 
their  crews  and  cargoes,  going  out  or  coming  in. 
Nobody  was  to  be  allowed  to  go  to  the  Indies  for 
any  purpose  whatever  without  a  license  formally 
obtained.  Careful  regulations  were  made  for  ham- 
pering trade  and  making  everything  as  vexatious 
as  possible  for  traders,  according  to  the  ordinary 
wisdom  of  governments  in  such  matters.  All  ex- 
penses were  to  be  borne  and  all  profits  received  by 
the  crown  of  Castile,  saving  the  rights  formerly 
guaranteed  to  Columbus.  The  cost  of  the  present 
expedition  was  partly  defrayed  with  stolen  money, 
the  plunder  wrung  from  the  worthy  and  industri- 
ous Jews  who  had  been  driven  from  their  homes 
by  the  internal  edict  of  the  year  before.  Exten- 
sive "  requisitions "  were  also  made  ;  in  other 
words,  when  the  sovereigns  wanted  a  ship  or  a 
barrel  of  gunpowder  they  seized  it,  and  impressed 
it  into  the  good  work  of  converting  the  heathen. 
To  superintend  this  missionary  work,  a  Franciscan 
monk  2  was  selected  who  had  lately  distinguished 

^  History  of  the  Spanish  Conquest,  vol.  i.  p.  48V 

^  Irving  calls  him  a  Benedictine,  but  lie  is  addressed  as  "fratrl" 
ordinis  Minorum  "  in  the  bull  clothing  him  with  apostolic  author- 
ity in  the  Indies,  June  25,  1493.  See  Raynaldua,  Annales  ecclesi- 
astici,  torn.  xi.  p.  21(5.  I  cannot  imagine  what  M.  Htrrisse  means 
by  calling  him  "  religieux  de  Saint- Vincent  de  i'^aule  ' '  (Christopht 
Colomb,  torn.  ii.  p.  55).    Yi*'  ^nt  do  Paul  was  not  bom  till  1570. 


462  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

himself  as  a  diplomatist  in  the  dispute  with  France 
over  the  border  province  of  liousillon. 
This  person  was  a  native  of  Catalonia, 
and  his  name  was  Bernardo  Boyle,  which  strongly 
suggests  an  Irish  origin.  Alexander  VT.  appointed 
him  his  apostolic  vicar  for  the  Indies,^  and  he 
seems  to  have  been  the  first  clergyman  to  perform 
mass  on  the  western  shores  of  the  Atlantic.  To 
assist  the  vicar,  the  six  Indians  brought  over  by 
Columbus  were  baptized  at  Barcelona,  with  the 
king  and  queen  for  their  godfather  and  godmother. 
It  was  hoped  that  they  would  prove  useful  as  mis- 
sionaries, and  when  one  of  them  presently  died  he 
was  said  to  be  the  first  Indian  ever  admitted  to 
heaven.2 

The  three  summer  months  were  occupied  in  fit- 
ting out  the  little  fleet.  There  were  fourteen  car- 
avels, and  three  larger  ^tore-ships  known  as  car- 
racks.  Horses,  mules,  and  other  cattle  were  put 
on  board,^  as  well  as  vines  and  sugar-canes,  and 
the  seeds  of  several  European  cereals,  for  it  was 
intended*  to  establish  a  permanent  colony  upon 
Hispaniola.  In  the  course  of  this  work  some 
slight  matters  of  disagreement  came  up  between 
Columbus  and  Fonseca,  and  the  question  having 
been  referred  to  the  sovereigns,  Fonseca  was  mildly 
snubbed  and  told  that  he  must  in  aU  respects  be 
guided  by  the  Admiral's  wishes.  From  that  time 
forth  this  ungodly  prelate  nourished  a  deadly  ha- 

^  Not  for  "  the  New  World,"  as  Irving  carelessly  has  it  in  his 
Columbus,  vol.  i.  p.  346.  No  such  phrase  had  been  tliought  of  in 
1498,  or  until  long  afterward. 

^  Herrera,  Hist,  de  las  Indias,  decad.  i,  lib.  ii.  cap.  5. 

'  Vita  deU'  Ammiraglio,  cap.  xliv. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STBANGE  COASTS.     468 

fcred  toward  Columbus,  and  never  lost  an  oppor- 
tunity for  whispering  evil  things  about  him.  The 
worst  of  the  grievous  afflictions  that  afterward 
beset  the  great  discoverer  must  be  ascribed  to  the 
secret  machinations  of  this  wretch. 

At  last  the  armament  was  ready.  People  were 
so  eager  to  embark  that  it  was  felt  necessary  tc 
restrain  tliem.  It  was  not  intended  to  have  moro 
than  1,200,  but  about  1,500  in  all  contrived  to  go, 
so  that  some  of  the  caravels  must  have  been  oveiv 
crowded.  The  character  of  the  company  was  very 
different  from  that  of  the  year  before.  Thos^ 
who  went  in  the  first  voyage  were  chiefly  common 
sailors.  Now  there  were  many  aristocratic  young 
men,  hot-blooded  and  feather-headed  hidalgos 
whom  the  surrender  of  Granada  had  left  without 
an  occupation.  Most  distinguished  among  these 
was  Alonso  de  Ojeda,  a  dare-devil  of  Notable  per- 
unrivalled  muscular  strength,  full  of  en-  barke'd^oVtile 
ergy  and  fanfaronade,  and  not  without  ^^^o^d'oy^^- 
generous  qualities,  but  with  very  little  soundness 
of  judgment  or  character.  Other  notable  person- 
ages in  tliis  expedition  were  Columbus's  youngest 
brother  Giacomo  (henceforth  called  Diego),  who 
had  come  from  Genoa  at  the  first  news  of  the 
Admiral's  triumphant  return ;  the  monk  Antonio 
de  Marchena,^  whom  historians  have  so  long  con- 
founded with  the  prior  Juan  Perez  ;  an  Aragonese 
gentleman  named  Pedro  Margarite,  a  favoudte  of 
the  king  and  destined  to  work  sad  mischief ;  Juan 


^  He  went  as  astronomer,  from  winch  we  may  perhaps  suppose 
that  scientific  considerations  had  made  him  one  of  the  earliest  and 
most  steadfast  upholdera  of  Columbus's  views. 


464  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA.  ^ 

Ponce  de  Leon,  who  afterwards  gave  its  name  to 
Florida;  Francisco  de  Las  Casas,  father  of  the 
great  apostle  and  historian  of  the  Indies;  and, 
last  but  not  least,  the  pilot  Juan  de  La  Cosa,  now 
charged  with  the  work  of  chart-making,  in  which 
he  was  an  acknowledged  master.^ 

The  pomp  and  bustle  of  the  departure  from 
Cadiz,  September  25,  1493,  at  which  the  Admi- 
ral's two  sons,  Diego  and  Ferdinand,  were  present, 
must  have  been  one  of  the  earliest  recollections  of 
the  younger  boy,  then  just  five  years  of  age.^ 
Again  Columbus  stopped  at  the  Canary  islands, 
this  time  to  take  on  board  goats  and  sheep,  pigs 
and  fowls,  for  he  had  been  struck  by  the  absence 
of  all  such  animals  on  the  coasts  which  he  had 
visited.^  Seeds  of  melons,  oranges,  and  lemons 
were  also  taken.  On  the  7th  of  October  the  ships 
weighed  anchor,  heading  a  trifle  to  the  south  of 
west,  and  after  a  pleasant  and  uneventful  voyage 
they  sighted  land  on  the  3d  of  November.*     It 

^  See  Harrisse,  Chnstophe  Colomh,  torn.  ii.  pp.  55,  56;  Las 
Caias,  Hist,  de  las  Indias,  torn.  i.  p.  498 ;  Fabi^,  Vida  de  Las 
Casas,  Madrid,  1879,  torn.  i.  p.  11 ;  Oviedo,  IJist.  de  las  Indias, 
torn.  i.  p.  467 ;  Navarrete,  Coleccion  de  viages,  torn.  ii.  pp.  143- 
149. 

2  "E  con  qnesto  preparamento  il  raercoled^  ai  25  del  mesa  di 
settembre  dell'  anno  1493  un'  ora  avanti  il  levar  del  sole,  essen- 
dovi  io  6  mio  fratel  presenti,  1'  Ammiraglio  lev6  le  ancore,"  etc. 
Vita  deW  Ammiraglio,  cap.  xliv. 

*  Eight  80W3  were  bought  for  70  roarayedis  apiece,  and  "  destas 
ocbo  puercas  se  ban  niultiplicado  todos  los  puercos  que,  basta  hoy, 
ha  habido  y  hay  en  todas  estas  Indias,"  etc.  Las  Casas,  Historia, 
torn.  ii.  p.  3. 

*  The  relation  of  this  second  voyage  by  Dr.  Chanca  may  be 
found  in  Navarrete,  torn.  i.  pp.  198-241 ;  an  interesting  relation 
iu  Italian  by  iSimone  Verde,  a  Florentine  merchant  then  living  ii| 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     465 

turned  out  to  be  a  small  mountainous  island,  and 
as  it  was  discovered  on  Sunday  they  called  it 
Dominica.  In  a  fortnight's  cruise  in  these  Carib- 
bean waters  they  discovered  and  named  several 
islands,  such  as  Marigalante,  Guadaloupe,  Anti- 
gua, and  others,  and  at  length  reached 

T»  T1  mi       '    1     1  •  CI  Cruise  among 

irorto  Kico.     ilie  mnabitants  of  these  the  cannibal 

islands. 

islands  were  ferocious  cannibals,  very 
different  from  the  natives  encountered  on  the 
former  voyage.  There  were  skirmishes  in  which  a 
few  Spaniards  were  killed  with  poisoned  arrows. 
On  Guadaloupe  the  natives  lived  in  square  houses 
made  of  saplings  intertwined  with  reeds,  and  on 
the  rude  porticoes  attached  to  these  houses  some 
of  the  wooden  pieces  were  carved  so  as  to  look 
like  serpents.  In  some  of  these  houses  human 
limbs  were  hanging  from  the  roof,  cured  with 
smoke,  like  ham  ;  and  fresh  pieces  of  human  flesh 
were  found  stewing  in  earthen  kettles,  along  with 
the  flesh  of  parrots.  Now  at  length,  said  Peter 
Martyr,  was  proved  the  truth  of  the  stories  of 
Polyphemus  and  the  Lajstrygonians,  and  the  reader 
must  look  out  lest  his  hair  stand  on  end.^  These 
western  Laestrygonians  were  known  as  Caribbees, 
Caribales,  or  Canibales,  and  have  thus  furnished 
an  epithet  which  we  have  since  learned  to  apply  to 
man-eaters  the  world  over. 

ValladoHd,  ia  published  in  Harrisse,  Christophe  Colombo  torn.  ii. 
pp.  08-78.  The  narrative  of  the  curate  of  Los  Palacios  is  of 
especial  value  for  this  voyage. 

^  Martyr,  Epist.  cxlvii.  ad  Pomponhim  Latum ;  cf.  Odyssey^ 
X.  11!);  Thucyd.  vi.  2.  —  Irving  (vol.  i.  p.  1585)  finds  it  hard  to  be- 
lieve these  stories,  but  the  prevalence  of  cannibalism,  not  only  in 
these  islands,  but  throug'hout  a  very  large  part  of  aboriginal 
America,  has  been  superabundantly  proved. 


466  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

It  was  late  at  night  on  the  27th  of  November 
that  Columbus  arrived  in  the  harbour  of  La  Navi- 
dad  and  fired  a  salute  to  arouse  the  attention  of 
the  party  that  had  been  left  there  the  year  before. 
There  was  no  reply  and  the  silence  seemed  fraught 
with  evil  omen.  On  going  ashore  next  morning 
and  exploring  the  neighbourhood,  the  Spaniards 

came  upon  sights  of  dismal  significance. 
Nilvidad*^     The  fortress  was  pulled  to  pieces  and 

partly  burnt,  the  chests  of  provisions 
were  broken  open  and  emptied,  tools  and  fragments 
of  European  clothing  were  found  in  the  houses  of 
the  natives,  and  finally  eleven  corpses,  identifiable 
as  those  of  white  men,  were  found  buried  near  the 
fort.  Not  one  of  the  forty  men  who  had  been  left 
behind  in  that  place  ever  turned  up  to  tell  the 
tale.  The  little  colony  of  La  Navidad  had  been 
wiped  out  of  existence.  From  the  Indians,  how- 
ever, Columbus  gathered  bits  of  information  that 
made  a  sufficiently  probable  story.  It  was  a  typ- 
ical instance  of  the  beginnings  of  colonization  in 
wild  countries.  In  such  instances  human  nature 
has  shown  considerable  uniformity.  Insubordina- 
tion and  deadly  feuds  among  themselves  had  com- 
bined with  reckless  outrages  upon  the  natives  to 
imperil  the  existence  of  this  little  party  of  rough 
sailors.  The  cause  to  which  Horace  ascribes  so 
many  direful  wars,  both  before  and  since  the 
days  of  fairest  Helen,  seems  to  have  been  the 
principal  cause  on  this  occasion.  At  length  a 
fierce  chieftain  named  Caonabo,  from  the  region 
of  Xaragua,  had  attacked  the  Spaniards  in  over- 
whelming force,  knocked  their  blockhouse  about 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     467 


their  heads,  and  butchered  all  that  were  left  of 
them. 

Tliip  was  a  gloomy  welcome  to  the  land  of  prom- 
ise. There  was  nothing  to  be  done  but  to  build 
new  fortifications  and  found  a  town.  The  site 
chosen  for  this  new  settlement,  which  Building  of 
was  named  Isabella,  was  at  a  good  har-  i*''''^^^*- 
bour  about  thirty  miles  east  of  Monte  Christi.  It 
was  chosen  because  Columbus  vmderstood  from  the 
natives  that  it  was  not  far  from  there  to  the  gold- 
bearing  mountains  of  Cibao,  a  name  which  still 
seemed  to  signify  Cipango.  Quite  a  neat  little 
town  was  presently  built,  with  church,  market- 
j)lace,  public  granary,  and  dwelling-houses,  the 
whole  encompassed  with  a  stone  wall.  An  explor- 
ing party  led  by  Ojeda  into  the  mountains  of  Cibao 
found  gold  dust  and  pieces  of  gold  ore  in  the  beds 
of  the  brooks,  and  returned  elated  with  this  dis- 
covery. Twelve  of  the  ships  were  now  sent  back 
to  Spain  for  further  supplies  and  reinforcements, 
and  specimens  of  the  gold  were  sent  as  Exploration 
an  earnest  of  what  was  likely  to  be  found.  °^  ^''""'" 
At  length,  in  March,  1494,  Columbus  set  forth, 
with  400  armed  men,  to  explore  the  Cibao  country. 
The  march  was  full  of  interest.  It  is  upon  this 
occasion  that  we  first  find  mention  of  the  frantic 
terror  manifested  by  Indians  at  the  sight  of  horses. 
At  first  they  supposed  the  horse  and  his  rider  to 
be  a  kind  of  centaur,  and  when  the  rider  dis- 
mounted this  separation  of  one  creature  into  two 
overwhelmed  them  witli  supernatural  terror.  Even 
when  they  had  begun  to  get  over  this  notion  they 


468  THE  DISCOVEBY  OF  AMERICA.  ^ 

were  in  dread  of  being  eaten  by  the  horses.^  These 
natives  lived  in  houses  grouped  into  villages,  and 
had  carved  wooden  idols  and  rude  estufas  for  their 
tutelar  divinities.  It  was  ascertained  that  different 
tribes  tried  to  steal  each  other's  idols  and  even 
fought  for  the  possession  of  valuable  objects  of 
'  medicine."  2  Columbus  observed  and  reported 
the  customs  of  these  people  with  some  minuteness. 
There  was  nothing  that  agreed  with  Marco  Polo's 
descriptions  of  Cipango,  but  so  far  as  concerned 
the  discovery  of  gold  mines,  the  indications  were 
such  as  to  leave  little  doubt  of  the  success  of  this 
reconnaissance.  The  Admiral  now  arranged  his 
forces  so  as  to  hold  the  inland  regions  just  visited 
and  gave  the  general  command  to  Margarite,  who 
was  to  continue  the  work  of  exploration.  He  left 
his  brother,  Diego  Columbus,  in  charge  of  the 
colony,  and  taking  three  caravels  set  sail  from 
Isabella  on  the  24th  of  April,  on  a  cruise  of  dis- 
covery in  these  Asiatic  waters. 

A  brief  westward  sail  brought  the  little  squadron 
into  the  Windward  Passage  and  in  sight  of  Cape 
Mayzi,  which  Columbus  on  his  first  voyage  had 
named  Cape  Alpha  and  Omega  as  being  the  east- 
cape  Alpha  ernmost  point  on  the  Chinese  coast.  He 
and  Omega.  Relieved  that  if  he  were  to  sail  to  the 
right  of  this  cape  he  should  have  the  continent  on 
his  port  side  for  a  thousand  miles  and  more,  as  far 
as  Quinsay  and  Cambaluc  (Peking).     If  he  had 

^  For  an  instance  of  400  hostile  Indians  fleeing  before  a  single 
amied  horseman,  see  Vita  deW  Ammiraglio,  cap.  lii. ;  Las  Casas, 
Hist.  torn.  li.  p.  4(). 

^  Compare  the  Fisherman's  story  of  Drogio,  above,  pp.  246^ 
252. 


-1^ 


"i.  li 


470  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

sailed  in  this  direction  and  had  succeeded  in  keep- 
ing to  the  east  of  Florida,  ho  would  have  kept  a 
continent  on  his  port  side,  and  a  thousand  miles 
would  liave  taken  him  a  long  way  toward  that  Vin- 
land  which  our  Scandinavian  friends  would  fondly 
have  us  believe  was  his  secret  guiding-star,  and 
the  geographical  position  of  which  they  suppose 
him  to  have  known  with  such  astounding  accuracy. 
But  on  this  as  on  other  occasions,  if  the  Admiral 
had  ever  received  any  information  about  Vinland, 
it  n7ust  be  owned  that  he  treated  it  very  cavalierly, 
for  he  chose  the  course  to  the  left  of  Cape  Mayzi. 
His  decision  is  intelligible  if  we  bear  in  mind  that 
he  had  not  yet  circumnavigated  Hayti  and  was  not 
yet  cured  of  his  belief  that  its  nortiiern  shore  was 
the  shore  of  the  great  Cipango.  At  the  same  time 
he  had  seen  enough  on  his  first  voyage  to  convince 
him  that  the  relative  positions  of  Cipango  and  the 
mainland  of  Cathay  were  not  correctly  laid  down 
upon  the  Toscanelli  map.  He  had  already  in- 
spected two  or  three  hundred  miles  of  the  coast  to 
the  right  of  Cape  Mayzi  without  finding  traces  of 
civilization  ;  and  whenever  infpiiries  were  made 
about  gold  or  powerful  kingdoms  the  natives  inva- 
riably pointed  to  the  south  or  southwest.  Colum- 
bus, therefore,  decided  to  try  his  luck  in  this  direc- 
tion. He  passed  to  the  left  of  Cape  Mayzi  and 
followed  the  southern  coast  of  Cuba. 

By  the  3d  of  May  the  natives  were  pointing  so 
persistently  to  the  south  and  off  to  sea  that  he 
Discovery  of  cliaugcd  liis  coursG  in  that  direction  and 
Jamaica.  g^^^^^  cauic  upou  tlic  nortlicm  coast  of 

the  island  which  w^  still  know  by  its  native  name 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     471 

Jamaica.  Here  he  found  Indians  more  intelligent 
and  more  warlike  than  any  la;  had  as  yet  seen.  lie 
was  es])eeially  struek  with  the  elegance  of  their 
canoes,  some  of  them  nearly  a  hundred  feet  in 
length,  carved  and  hollowed  from  the  trunks  of  tall 
trees.  We  may  alrejidy  observe  that  different  tribes 
of  Indians  comported  themselves  very  diffeiently  at 
the  first  sight  of  white  men.  While  the  natives  of 
some  of  the  islands  prostrated  themselves  in  ad- 
oration of  these  sky-creatures,  or  behaved  with 
a  timorous  politeness  which  the  Spaniards  mis- 
took for  gentleness  of  disi)osition,  in  other  })laces 
the  red  men  showed  fight  at  once,  acting  upon  the 
brute  impulse  to  drive  away  strangers.  In  both 
cases,  of  course,  dread  of  the  unknown  was  the 
prompting  impulse,  though  so  differently  mani- 
fested. As  the  Spaniards  went  ashore  upon  Ja- 
maica, the  Indians  greeted  them  with  a  shower  of 
javelins  and  for  a  few  moments  stood  up  against 
the  deadly  fire  of  the  cross-l)ows,  but  when  they 
turned  to  flee,  a  single  bloodhound,  let  loose  upon 
them,  scattered  them  in  wildest  panic.^ 

Finding  no  evidences  of  civilization  upon  this 
beautiful  island,  Colrmbus  turned  northward  and 
struck  the  Cuban  coast  again  at  the  point  which 
still  bears  the  name  he  gave  it.  Cape  Cruz.  Be- 
tween the  general  contour  of  this  end  of 

*=•  CoHstinR  the 

Cuba  and  that  of  the  eastern  extrem-  f^outh  side 

^  ^  ol  Cuba. 

ity  of  Cathay  upon  the  Toscanelli  map 

there  is  a  curious  resemblance,  save  that  the  direc- 

^  Bernaldez,  Reyes  Catdlicos,  cap.  cxxv.  Domesticated  dogs 
were  found  generally  in  aboriginal  America,  but  tliey  were  very 
paltry  curs  compared  to  these  fierce  hounds,  one  of  which  could 
handle  an  unarmed  man  as  easily  as  a  terrier  handles  a  rat. 


^ 


472 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


tion  is  in  the  one  case  more  east  and  west  and  in 
the  other  more  north  and  south.  Cohnnbus  passed 
no  cities  like  Zaitcm,  nor  cities  of  any  sort,  but 
when  he  struck  into  the  smiling  archipelago  which 
he  called  the  Queen's  Gardens,  now  known  as 
Cayos  de  las  Doce  Leguas,  he  felt  sure  that  he  was 
among  Marco  Polo's  seven  thousand  spice  islands. 
On  the  3d  of  June,  at  some  point  on  the  Cuban 
coast,  probably  near  Trinidad,  the  crops  of  several 
doves  were  opened  and  spices  found  in  them.  None 
of  the  natives  here  had  ever  heard  of  an  end  to 
Cuba,  and  they  believed  it  was  endless.^  TV  '  next 
country  to  the  west  of  themselves  was  nanied  Man- 
gon,  and  it  was  inhabited  by  people  with  tails 
which  they  carefully  hid  by  wearing  loose  robes  of 
cloth.  This  information  seemed  decisive  to  Co- 
lumbus. Evidently  this  Mangon  was  Mangi,  the 
province  in  which  was  the  city  of  Zaiton,  the  prov- 
ince just  south  of  Cathay.  And  as  for  the  tailed 
men,  the  book  of  Mandeville  had  a  story  of  some 
naked  savages  in  eastern  Asia  who  spoke  of  their 
more  civilized  neighbours  as  wearing  clothes  in 
order  to  cover  up  some  bodily  peculiarity  or  defect. 
Could  there  be  any  doubt  t^  t  the  Spanish  cara- 
vels had  come  at  length  to  the  coast  of  opulent 
Mangi?  2 

^  As  a  Greek  would  have  said,  i^wfipos,  a  continent. 

*  Bemaldez,  Reyes  Catdlicos,  cap.  cxxvii.  Mr.  Irving,  in  citing 
these  same  incidents  from  Bemaldez,  could  not  quite  rid  himself 
of  the  feeling  that  there  Avas  something  strange  or  peculiar  in  the 
Admiral's  method  of  interpreting  such  information :  "  Animated 
by  one  of  the  pleasing  illusions  of  his  ardent  imagination,  Colum- 
bus purs  ued  his  voyage,  with  a  prosperous  breeze,  along  the  sup- 
posed continent  of  Asia."  (Life  of  Columbus,  vol.  i.  p.  493.) 
This  lends  a  false  colour  to  the  picture,  which  the  general  reader 


I 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     473 

Under  the  influence  of  this  belief,  when  a  few 
days  later  they  landed  in  search  of  fresh  water^ 
and  a  certain  archer,  on  the  lookout  for  game, 
caught  distant  glimpses  of  a  flock  of  tall  white 
cranes  feeding  in  an  everglade,  he  fled  to  his  com- 
rades with  the  story  that  he  had  seen  a  party  of 
men  clad  in  long  white  tunics,  and  all  -r,,^ ..  j^„p,g 
agreed  that  these  must  be  the  people  of  "'  Mangon." 
Mangon.^  Columbus  sent  a  small  company  ashore 
to  find  them.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  the  search 
was  fruitless,  but  footprints  of  alligators,  inter- 
preted as  footprintvS  of  griffins  guarding  hoarded 
gold  ,2  frightened  the   men   back   to   their   ships. 

is  pretty  sure  to  make  still  falser.  To  suppose  the  southern  coast 
of  Cuba  to  be  the  southern  coast  of  Toseanelli's  Mangi  required 
no  illusion  of  an  "ardent  imagination."  It  was  simply  a  plain 
common-sense  conchision  reached  by  sober  reasoning  from  such 
data  aa  were  then  accessible  (i.  e.  the  Toscanelli  map,  amended  by 
information  such  as  was  understood  to  be  givcsn  bj'  the  natives) ; 
it  was  more  probable  than  any  other  theory  of  the  situation  likely 
to  be  devised  from  those  data ;  and  it  seems  fanciful  to  us  to-day 
only  because  knoAvledge  acquired  since  the  time  of  Columbus  ha« 
shown  us  how  far  from  correct  it  was.  Modern  historians  abound 
in  unconscious  turns  of  expression  —  as  in  this  quotation  from 
Irving  —  which  project  modern  knowledge  back  into  the  past, 
and  thus  destroy  the  historical  perspective.  I  shall  mention  sev- 
eral other  instances  from  Irving,  and  the  reader  must  not  suppose 
that  this  is  any  indication  of  captiousness  on  my  part  toward  a 
writer  for  whom  my  only  feeling  is  that  of  sincerest  love  and 
veneration. 

^  These  tropical  birds  are  called  soldados,  or  "  soldiers,"  be- 
cause their  stately  attitudes  remind  one  of  sentinels  on  duty.  The 
whole  town  of  Angostura,  in  Venezuela,  was  one  day  frightened 
out  of  its  wits  by  the  sudden  appearance  of  a  flock  of  these  cranes 
on  the  summit  of  a  neighbouring  hill.  They  were  mistaken  for  a 
war-party  of  Indians.  Humboldt,  Voyage  aux  regions  (quinoxialet 
du  Nouveau  Continent,  tom.  ii.  p.  314. 

2  See  above,  p.  287,  note. 


474 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


From  the  natives,  with  whom  the  Spaniards  could 
converse  only  by  signs,  they  seemed  to  learn 
that  they  were  going  toward  the  realm  of  Prester 
John ;  ^  and  in  such  wise  did  they  creep  along  the 
coast  to  the  point,  some  fifty  miles  west  of  Bioa 
Bay,  where  it  begins  to  trend  decidedly  to  the 
southwest.  Before  they  had  reached  Point  Man= 
gles,  a  hundred  miles  farther  on,  inasmuch  as  they 
found  tliis  southwesterly  trend  persistent,  the  proof 
that  they  were  upon  the  coast  of  the  Asiatic  con- 
tinent began  to  seem  complete.  Columbus  thought 
that  they  had  passed  the  point  (lat.  23°,  long.  145° 
on  Toscanelli's  map)  where  the  coast  of  Asia  began 
to  trend  steadily  toward  the  southwest.^  By  pur- 
suing this  coast  he  felt  sure  that  he  would  eventu- 
ally reach  the  peninsula  (Malacca)  which  Ptolemy, 
who  knew  of  it  only  by  vague  hearsay,  called  the 

^  For  these  events,  see  Bernaldez,  Reyes  Catdlicos,  cap.  cxxiii. ; 
F.  Columbus,  Vita  delV  Ammiraglio,  cap.  Ivi. ;  Muiioz,  Historia 
del  Nuevo  Mundo,  lib.  v.  §  10 ;  Humboldt,  Examen  critique,  torn, 
iv.  pp.  237-203 ;  Irving  s  Columbus,  vol.  i.  pp.  491-504. 

'■^  That  is  to  say,  he  thought  he  had  passed  the  coast  of  Mangi 
(southern  China)  and  reached  the  beginning  of  the  coast  of 
Champa  (Cochin  China ;  see  Yule's  Marco  Polo,  vol.  ii.  p.  213). 
The  name  Champa,  coming  to  European  writers  through  an  Ital- 
ian source,  was  written  Ciampa  and  Ciamba.  See  its  position  on 
the  Behaim  and  Toscauelli  maps,  and  also  on  Ruysch's  map,  1508, 
below,  vol.  ii.  p.  114.  Peter  Martyr  says  that  Columbus  was  sure 
that  he  had  reached  the  coast  of  Gangetic  (i.  e.  what  wo  call 
Farther)  India :  "  Indian  Gangetidis  continentem  earn  (Cubaj) 
plagam  esse  contendit  Colonus."  Epist,  xciii.  ad  liernardhittm. 
Of  course  Columbus  understood  that  this  region,  while  agreeing 
well  enough  with  Toscanelli's  latitude,  was  far  from  agreeing 
with  his  longitude.  But  from  the  moment  when  he  turned  east- 
ward on  his  first  voyage  he  seems  to  have  made  up  his  mind  that 
Toscanelli's  longitudes  needed  serious  amendment.  Indeed  hd 
bad  always  used  different  measurements  from  Toscauelli. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     475 


being 

jseing 

sast- 

I  that 

h« 


i 


I 


Golden  Chersonese.^  An  immense  idea  now  flitted 
through  the  mind  of  Columbus.  If  he  xhe  ooiden 
could  reach  and  double  that  peninsula  Chersonese. 
he  could  then  find  his  way  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Ganges  river ;  thence  he  might  cross  the  Indian 
ocean,  pass  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  (for  Dias  had 
surely  shown  that  the  way  was  open),  and  return 
that  way  to  Spain  after  circumnavigating  the 
globe  !  But  fate  had  reserved  this  achievement  for 
another  man  of  gi-eat  heart  and  lofty  thoughts,  a 
quarter  of  a  century  later,  who  should  indeed  ac- 
complish what  Columbu-i  dreamed  but  only  after 
crossing  another  Sea  of  Darkness,  the  most  stu- 
pendous body  of  .water  on  our  globe,  the  mere  ex- 
istence of  which  until  after  Columbus  had  died  no 
European  ever  suspected.^  If  Columbus  had  now 
sailed  about  a  hundred  miles  farther,  he  would 
have  found  the  end  of  Cuba,  and  might  perhaps 
have  sldrted  the  northern  shore  of  Yucatan  and 
come  upon  the  barbaric  splendours  of  Uxmal  and 
Campeche.  The  excitement  which  such  news 
would  have  caused  in  Spain  might  perhaps  have 
changed  all  the  rest  of  his  life  and  saved  him  from 
the  worst  of  his  troubles.  But  the  crews  were  now 
unwilling  to  go  farther,  and  the  Admiral  realized 
that  it  would  be  impossible  to  undertake  such  a 
voyage  as  he  had  in  mind  with  no  more  than  their 
present  outfit.  So  it  was  decided  to  return  to 
Hispaniola. 

^  For  an  account  of  Ptolemy's  almost  purely  hypothetical  and 
curiously  distorted  notions  about  southeastern  Asia,  see  Uuubury'a 
History  of  Ancient  Geography,  vol.  ii.  pp  (jU4-UUS. 

**  ibee  below,  vol.  ii.  pp.  2U0-2M) 


476 


TEE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


Upon  consultation  with  La  Cosa  and  others,  it 
was  unanimously  agreed  that  they  were  upon  the 
coast  of  the  continent  of  Asia.  The  evidence 
seemed  conclusive.  From  Cape  Mayzi  (Alpha  and 
Omega)  they  had  observed,  upon  their  own  reckon- 
ing, 335  leagues,  or  about  1,000  geographical  mileSr, 
of  continuous  coast  running  steadily  in  nearly  the 
same  direction.^  Clearly  it  was  too  long  for  the 
coast  of  an  island ;  and  then  there  was  the  name 
Mangon  =  Mangi.  The  only  puzzling  circum- 
stance was  that  they  did  not  find  any  of  Marco 
Polo's  cities.  They  kept  getting  scraps  of  infor- 
mation which  seemed  to  rsfer  to  gorgeous  king- 
doms, but  these  were  always  in  .the  dim  distance. 
Still  there  was  no  doubt  that  they  had  discovered 
the  coast  of  a  continent,  and  of  course  such  a  con- 
tinent could  be  nothing  else  but  Asia  ! 

Such  unanimity  of  opinion  might  seem  to  leave 
nothing  to  be  desired.  But  Columbus  had  already 
met  with  cavillers.  Before  he  started  on  this 
cruise  from  Isabella  some  impatient  hidalgos,  dis- 
gusted at  finding  much  to  do  and  little  to  get,  had 
begun  to  hint  that  the  Admii-al  was  a  humbug,  and 
that  his  "  Indies  "  were  no  such  great  affair  after 
all.  In  order  to  silence  these  ill-natured  critics,  he 
sent  his  notary,  accompanied  by  four  witnesses,  to 
every  person  in  those  three  caravels,  to  get  a  sworn 
statement.  If  anybody  had  a  grain  of  doubt  about 
this  coast  being  the  coast  of  Asia,  so  that  you  could 

^  The  length  of  Cuba  from  Cape  Mayzi  to  Cape  San  Antonio  ia 
about  700  English  miles.  But  in  following  the  sinuosities  of  the 
coast,  and  including  tacks,  the  estimate  of  these  pilots  was  prob* 
ably  not  far  from  correct. 


)rn 

)Ut 

lid 

lo  ia 
I  the 
rob* 


m 

p. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     477 

go  ashore  there  and  walk  on  dry  land  aU  the  way 
to  Spain  if  so  disposed,  let  him  declare  his  doubts 
once  for  all,  so  that  they  might  now  be 
duly  considered.    No  one  expressed  any  expression  of 
doubts.    All  declared,  under  oath,  their 
firm  belief.     It  was  then  agreed  that  if  any  of  the 
number  should  thereafter  deny  or  contradict  this 
sworn  statement,  he  should  have  his  tongue  slit ;  ^ 
and  if  an  officer,  he  should  be  further  punished 
with  a  fine  of   10,000  maravedis,  or  if   a  sailor, 
with  a  hundred  lashes.     These  proceedings  were 
embodied  in  a  formal  document,  dated  June  12, 
1494,  which  is  still  to  be  seen  in  the  Archives  of 
the  Indies  at  Seville.^ 

Having  disposed  of  this  solemn  matter,  the  three 
caravels  turned  eastward,  touching  at  the  Isle  of 
Pines  and  coasting  back  along  the  south  side  of 
Cuba.  The  headland  where  the  Admiral  first 
became  convinced  of  the  significance  of  the  curva- 
ture of  the  coast,  he  named  Cape  of  Good  Hope,^ 
believing  it  to  be  much  nearer  the  goal  which  all 
were  seeking  than  the  other  cape  of  that  name,  dis- 
covered by  Dias  seven  years  before. 

It  wiU  be  remembered  that  the  Admiral,  upon 
his  first  voyage,  had  carried  home  with  vicissitudeeof 
him  two  theories,  —  first,  that  in  the  Cu-  "'^'^'y- 
ban  coast  he  had  already  discovered  that  of  the  con- 

^  "E  cortada  la  lengua;  "  "  y  le  cortarian  la  lengiia. "  Irving 
understands  it  to  mean  cutting  off  the  tongue.  But  in  those  days 
of  symbolism  slitting  the  tip  of  that  uni'uly  member  was  a  recog- 
nized punishment  for  serious  lying. 

^  It  is  printed  in  full  in  Navarrete,  tom.  ii.  pp.  143-149. 

8  It  ia  given  upon  La  Cosa's  map;  see  below,  vol.  ii.,  fronti»- 
piece. 


V[V 


478  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

tinent  of  Asia,  secondly  that  Hispaniola  was  Ci- 
pango.  The  first  theory  seemed  to  he  confirmed  by 
further  experience ;  the  second  was  now  to  receive 
a  serious  shock.  Leaving  Cape  Cruz  the  caravels 
stood  over  to  Jamaica,  leisurely  explored  the  south- 
ern side  of  that  island,  and  as  soon  as  adverse 
winds  would  let  them,  kept  on  eastward  till  land 
appeared  on  the  port  bow.  Nobody  recognized  it 
until  an  Indian  chief  who  had  learned  some  Span- 
ish hailed  them  from  the  shore  and  told  them  it 
was  Hispaniola.  They  then  followed  that  southern 
|i  11  coast  its  whole  length,  discovering  the  tiny  islands, 

Beata,  Saona,  and  Mona.  Here  Columbus,  over- 
come by  long-sustained  fatigue  and  excitement, 
suddenly  fell  into  a  death-like  lethargy,  and  in  this 
sad  condition  was  carried  all  the  way  to  Isabella, 
and  to  his  own  house,  where  he  was  put  to  bed. 
Hispaniola  had  thus  been  circumnavigated,  and 
either  it  was  not  Cipango  or  else  that  wonder- 
land must  be  a  much  smaller  affair  than  Tosca- 
nelli  and  Martin  Behaim  had  depicted  it.^  There 
was  something  truly  mysterious  about  these  Strange 
Coasts ! 

When   Columbus,  after   many  days,  recovered 

consciousness,  he  found  his  brother  Bartholomew 

standing  by   his   bedside.      It  was    six 

Arrival  of  .  i         i      i  i 

Bartholomew    years  siucc  they  had  last  parted  company 

at  Lisbon,  whence  the  younger  brother 

started  for  England,  while  the  elder  returned  to 

Spain.    The  news  of  Christopher's  return  from  his 

^  Hispaniola  continued,  however,  for  many  years  to  be  com< 
monly  identified  with  Cipango.  JSee  note  D  on  Kuysch's  map, 
1608,  below,  vol.  ii.  p.  114. 


i 


TEE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      479 

first  voyage  found  Bartholomew  in  Paris,  whence 
he  started  as  soon  as  he  could  for  Seville,  but  did 
not  arrive  there  until  just  after  the  second  expedi- 
tion had  started.  Presently  the  sovereigns  sent 
him  with  three  ships  to  Hispaniola,  to  carry  sup- 
plies to  the  colony ;  and  there  he  arrived  while  the 
Admiral  was  exploring  the  coast  of  Cuba.  The 
meeting  of  the  two  brothers  was  a  great  relief  to 
both.  The  affection  between  them  was  very  strong, 
and  each  was  a  support  for  the  other.  The  Admi- 
ral at  once  proceeded  to  appoint  Bartholomew  to 
the  office  of  Adelantado,  which  in  this  instance  was 
equivalent  to  making  him  governor  of  Hispaniola 
under  himseK,  the  Vicerov  of  the  Indies.  In  mak- 
ing  this  appointment  Columbus  seems  to  have 
exceeded  the  authority  granted  him  by  the  second 
article  of  his  agreement  of  April,  1492,  with  the 
sovereigns ;  ^  but  they  mended  the  matter  in  1497 
by  themselves  investing  Bartholomew  with  the 
office  and  dignity  of  Adelantado. ^ 

Columbus  was  in  need  of  all  the  aid  he  could 
summon,  for,  during  his  absence,  the  island  had 
become  a  pandemonium.     His    brother 

•T-v«  p       f>        1  1  Mutiny  in 

Diego,  a  man  of  refined  and  studious  hab-  nispauioia ; 

,  p  ,     ,  .  desertion  of 

its,  who  afterwards  became  a  priest,  was  Boyie  and 

.-.-i.T  .   .  Margarite. 

too  mid  in  disposition  to  govern  the  hot- 
heads who  had  come  to  Hispaniola  to  get  rich  with- 
out labour.  They  would  not  submit  to  the  rule  of 
this  foreigner.  Instead  of  doing  honest  work  they 
roamed  about  the  island,  abusing  the  Indians  and 
slaying  one  another  in  silly  quarrels.     Chief  among 

^  See  above,  p.  417. 

^  Las  Catas,  Hist,  cle  las  Indias-  tcm.  ii.  p.  80. 


480 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


the  offenders  was  King  Ferdinand's  favourite,  the 
commander  Margarite;  and  he  was  aided  and 
abetted  by  Friar  Boyle.  Some  time  after  Barthol- 
omew's arrival,  these  two  men  of  Aragon  gathered 
about  them  a  party  of  malcontents  and,  seizing 
the  ships  which  had  brought  that  mariner,  sailed 
away  to  Spain.  Making  their  way  to  court,  they 
sought  pardon  for  thus  deserting  the  colony,  say- 
ing that  duty  to  their  sovereigns  demanded  that 
they  should  bring  home  a  report  of  what  was  going 
on  in  the  Indies  They  decried  the  value  of  Co- 
lumbus's discoveries,  and  reminded  the  king  that 
Hispaniola  was  taking  money  out  of  the  treasury 
much  faster  than  it  was  putting  it  in;  an  argu- 
ment well  calculated  to  influence  Ferdinand  that 
summer,  for  he  was  getting  ready  to  go  to  war 
with  France  over  the  Naples  affair.  Then  the  two 
recreants  poured  forth  a  stream  of  accusations 
against  the  brothers  Colimibus,  the  general  purport 
of  which  was  that  they  were  gross  tyrants  not  fit 
to  be  trusted  with  the  command  of  Spaniards. 

No  marked  effect  seems  to  have  been  produced 
by  these  first  complaints,  but  when  Margarite  and 
Boyle  were  once  within  reach  of  Fonseca,  we  need 
not  wonder  that  mischief  was  soon  brewing.  It 
was  unfortunate  for  Columbus  that  his  work  of 
exploration  was  hampered  by  the  necessity  of  found- 
ing a  colony  and  governing  a  parcel  of  unruly  men 
let  loose  in  the  wilderness,  far  away  from  the  pow- 
erful restraints  of  civilized  society.  Such  work 
required  undivided  attention  and  extraordinary 
talent  for  command.  It  does  not  appear  that 
Columbus  was  lacking  in  such  talent.    On  the  con- 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      481 

trary  both  he  and  his  brother  Bartholomew  seem  to 
have  possessed  it  in  a  high  degree.  But  the  situ- 
ation was  desperately  bad  when  the  spirit  of  mutiny 
was  fomented  by  deadly  enemies  at  court.  I  do 
not  find  adequate  justification  for  the  The  govem- 
charges  of  tyranny  brought  against  Co-  "umbiw  w^^ 
lumtus.  The  veracity  and  fairness  of  """y^^"**"'!- 
the  history  of  Las  Casas  are  beyond  question ;  in 
his  divinely  beautiful  spirit  one  sees  now  and  then 
a  trace  of  tenderness  even  for  Fonseca,  whose  con- 
duct toward  him  was  always  as  mean  and  malig- 
nant as  toward  Columbus.  One  gets  from  Las 
Casas  the  impression  that  the  Admiral's  high  tem- 
per was  usually  kept  under  firm  control,  and  that 
he  showed  far  less  severity  than  most  men  would 
have  done  under  similar  provocation.  Bartholo- 
mew was  made  of  sterner  stuff,  but  his  whole  career 
presents  no  instance  of  wanton  cruelty;  toward 
both  white  men  and  Indians  his  conduct  was  dis- 
tinguished by  clemency  and  moderation.  Under 
the  government  of  these  brothers  a  few  scoundrels 
were  hanged  in  Hispaniola.  Many  more  ought  to 
have  been. 

Of  the  attempt  of  Columbus  to  collect  tribute 
from  the  native  population,  and  its  con-  Troubles  with 
sequences  in  developing  the  system  of  "'®  Indians. 
repartimientos  out  of  which  grew  Indian  slavery, 
I  shall  treat  in  a  future  chapter.^  That  attempt, 
which  was  ill-advised  and  ill-managed,  was  part  of  a 
plan  for  checking  wanton  depredations  and  regulat- 
ing the  relations  between  the  Spaniards  and  the 
Indians.     The  colonists  behaved  so  badly  toward 

^  See  below,  vol.  ii.  pp.  433,  434, 


482  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

the  red  men  that  the  chieftain  Caonabo,  who  had 
destroyed  La  Navidad  the  year  before,  now  formed 
a  scheme  ^  for  a  general  alliance  among  the  native 
tribes,  hoping  with  sufficient  numbers  to  over- 
whelm and  exterminate  the  strangers,  in  spite  of 
their  solid-hoofed  monsters  and  death-dealing  thun- 
derbolts. This  scheme  was  revealed  to  Columbus, 
soon  after  his  return  from  the  coast  of  Cuba,  by 
the  chieftain  Guacanagari,  who  was  an  enemy  to 
Caonabo  and  courted  the  friendship  of  the  Span- 
iards. Alonso  de  Ojeda,  by  a  daring  stratagem, 
captured  Caonabo  and  brought  him  to  Columbus, 
who  treated  him  kindly  but  kept  him  a  prisoner 
until  it  should  be  convenient  to  send  him  to  Spain. 
But  this  chieftain's  scheme  was  nevertheless  put  in 
operation  through  the  influence  of  his  principal 
wife  Anacaona.  An  Indian  war  broke  out ;  roam- 
ing bands  of  Spaniards  were  ambushed  and  massa- 
cred; and  there  was  fighting  in  the  field,  where 
the  natives  —  assailed  by  fire-arms  and  cross-bows, 
horses  and  bloodhounds — were  wofuUy  defeated. 
Thus  in  the  difficult  task  of  controlling  mutinous 
Mission  of  white  men  and  defending  the  colony 
Aguado.  against   infuriated   red  men   Columbus 

spent  the  first  twelvemonth  after  his  return  from 
Cuba.  In  October,  1495,  there  arrived  in  the 
harbour  of  Isabella  four  caravels  laden  with  wel- 
come supplies.  In  one  of  these  ships  came  Juan 
Aguado,  sent  by  the  sovereigns  to  gather  informa- 
tion respecting  the  troubles  of  the  colony.     This 

^  The  first  of  a  series  of  such  schemes  in  American  history,  in- 
cluding those  of  Sassacus,  Philip,  Pontiac,  and  to  some  extent 
Tecumseh. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.     483 


appointment  was  doubtless  made  in  a  friendly 
spirit,  for  Columbus  had  formerly  reconmiended 
Aguado  to  favour.  But  the  arrival  of  such  a 
person  created  a  hope,  which  quickly  grew  into  a 
belief,  that  the  sovereigns  were  preparing  to  de- 
prive Columbus  of  the  government  of  the  island; 
and,  as  Irving  neatl}  says,  "it  was  a  time  of  ju- 
bilee for  offenders ;  every  culprit  started  up  into 
an  accuser."  All  the  ills  of  the  colony,  many  of 
them  inevitable  in  such  an  enterprise,  many  of  them 
due  to  the  shiftlessness  and  folly,  the  cruelty  and 
lust  of  idle  swash-bucklers,  were  now  laid  at  the 
door  of  Columbus.  'Aguado  was  pres-  Discovery  of 
ently  won  over  by  the  malcontents,  so  ^°^'^  '"""'*• 
that  by  the  time  he  was  ready  to  return  to  Spain, 
early  in  1496,  Columbus  felt  it  desirable  to  go 
along  with  him  and  make  his  own  explanations  to 
the  sovereigns.  Fortunately  for  his  purposes, 
just  before  he  started,  some  rich  gold  mines  were 
discovered  on  the  south  side  of  the  island,  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  Hayna  and  Ozema  rivers. 
Moreover  there  were  sundry  pits  in  these  mines, 
which  looked  like  excavations  and  seemed  to  indi- 
cate that  in  former  times  there  had  been  digging 
done.^  This  discovery  confirmed  the  Admiral  in 
a  new  theory,  which  he  was  beginning  to  form.  If 
it  should  turn  out  that  Hispaniola  was  not  Cipango, 
as  the  last  voyage  seemed  to  suggest,  perhaps  it 
might  prove  to  be  Ophir !  ^    Probably  these  ancient 


i;  i- 


^  The  Indians  then  living  upon  the  island  did  not  dig,  but 
scraped  up  the  small  pieces  of  gold  that  were  more  or  less  abun- 
dant  in  the  beds  of  shallow  streams. 

'^  Peter  Martyr,  De  Eebus  Oceanicis,  dec.  i.  lib.  iv. 


484  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

excavations  were  made  by  King  Solomon's  men 
when  they  came  here  to  get  gold  for  the  temi)le  at 
Speculations  Jerusalem!  If  so,  one  might  expect  to 
about  opiiir.  ^^^  silver,  ivory,  red  sandal-vvooil,  apes, 
and  peacocks  at  no  great  distance.  Just  where 
Ophir  was  situated  no  one  could  exactly  tell,^  but 
the  things  that  were  carried  thence  to  Jerusalem 
certainly  came  from  "the  Indies."  Columbus  con- 
ceived it  as  probably  lying  northeastward  of  the 
Golden  Chersonese  (Malacca)  and  as  identical  with 
the  island  of  Hispaniola. 

The  discovery  of  these  mines  led  to  the  transfer 
of  the  headquarters  of  the  colony  to  the  mouth  of 
„     ,.      ,     the  Ozema  river,  where,  in  the  summer 

Founding  of 

San  Domingo,  of  1496,  Bartholomew  Columbus  made 

1496. 

a  settlement  which  became  the  city  of 
San  Domingo. 2  Meanwhile  Aguado  and  the  Ad- 
miral sailed  for  Spain  early  in  March,  in  two  car- 
avels overloaded  with  more  than  two  hundred 
homesick  passengers.  In  choosing  his  course 
Columbus  did  not  show  so  much  sagacity  as  on  his 

^  The  original  Ophir  may  be  inferred,  from  Genesis  x,  29,  to 
have  been  situated  whei-e,  as  Milton  says, 

"  northeast  winds  blow 
Babisan  odours  from  the  spicy  shore 
Of  Araby  the  Blest," 

but  the  name  seems  to  liave  become  applied  indiscriminately  to 
the  remote  countries  reached  by  ships  that  sailed  past  that  coast ; 
chiefly  no  doubt,  to  Hindustan.  See  Lassen,  Indische  Alterthuni' 
skunde,  bd.  i.  p.  588. 

2  Bartholomew's  town  was  built  on  the  left  side  of  the  river, 
and  was  called  New  Isabella.  In  1504  it  was  destroyed  by  a  hur- 
ricane, and  rebuilt  on  tlie  right  bank  in  its  present  situation.  It 
was  then  named  San  Domingo  after  the  patron  saint  of  Domeuico^ 
the  father  of  Columbus. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      485 

first  return  voyage.  Instead  of  working  northward 
till  clear  of  the  ))elt  of  trade-winds,  he  rr,,^  retnnx 
kept  straight  to  the  east,  and  so  spent  a  *"y*8e- 
month  in  beating  and  tacking  before  getting  out  of 
the  Caribbean  Sea.  Scarcity  of  food  was  immi- 
nent, and  it  became  necessary  to  stop  at  Guadaloupe 
and  make  a  quantity  of  cassava  bread.  ^  It  was 
well  that  this  was  done,  for  as  the  ships  worked 
slowly  across  the  Atlantic,  struggling  against  per- 
petual head-winds,  the  provisions  were  at  length 
exhausted,  and  by  the  first  week  in  June  the  fam- 
ine was  such  that  Columbus  had  some  difficulty 
in  preventing  the  crews  from  eating  their  Indian 
captives,  of  whom  there  were  thirty  or  more  on 
board.  2 

At  length,  on  the  11th  of  June,  the  haggard  and 
starving  company  arrived  at  Cadiz,  and  Colmnbus, 
while  awaiting  orders  from  the  sovereig"ns,  stayed 
at  the  house  of  his  good  friend  Bernaldez,  the 
curate  of  Los  Palacios.^  After  a  month  he  attended 
court  at  Burgos,  and  was  kindly  received.  No 
allusion  was  made  to  the  complaints  against  him, 
and  the  sovereigns  promised  to  furnish  ships  for  a 
third  voyage  of  discovery.     For  the  moment,  how- 

^  While  the  Spaniards  were  on  this  island  they  encountered  a 
party  of  tall  and  powerful  women  armed  with  bowL  and  arrows ; 
so  that  Columbus  supposed  it  must  be  the  Asiatic  island  of  Ama- 
zons mentioned  by  Marco  Polo.  See  Yule's  Marco  Polo,  vol.  ii. 
pp.  388-340. 

2  Among  them  was  Caonabo,  who  died  on  the  voyage. 

^  The  curate  thus  heard  the  story  of  tho  second  voyage  from 
Columbus  himself  while  it  was  fresh  in  his  mind.  Columbus  also 
left  with  him  written  memoranda,  so  that  for  the  events  of  this 
expedition  the  Ilistoria  de  lot,  Beyes  Catulu  as  is  of  the  highest 
authority. 


wm 


486  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

ever,  other  things  interfered  with  this  enterprise. 
One  was  the  marriage  of  the  son  and  daughter  of 
Ferdinand  and  IsabeUa  to  the  (Uiughter  and  son  of 
the  Emperor  Maximilian.  The  war  with  France 
was  at  the  same  time  fast  draining  the  treasury. 
Indeed,  for  more  than  twenty  years,  Castile  had 
been  at  war  nearly  all  the  time,  first  with  Portugal, 
next  with  Granada,  then  with  France;  and  the 
crown  never  found  it  easy  to  provide  money  for 
maritime  enterprises.  Accordingly,  at  the  ear- 
nest solicitation  of  Vicente  Yam;z  Pinzon  and  other 
enterprising  mariners,  the  sovereigns  had  issued  a 
EdictBofi495  proclamation,  April  10,  1495,  granting 
aiid  1497.  ^Q  ^Y\  native  Spaniards  the  privilege  of 
making,  at  their  own  risk  and  expense,  voyages  of 
discovery  or  traffic  to  the  newly  found  coasts.  As 
the  crown  was  to  take  a  pretty  heavy  tariff  out  of 
the  profits  of  these  expeditions,  while  all  losses 
were  to  be  borne  by  the  adventurers,  a  fairly  cer- 
tain source  of  revenue,  be  it  great  or  small,  seemed 
likely  to  be  opened.^     Columbus  protested  against 

^  "  All  vessels  were  to  sail  exclusively  from  the  port  of  Cadiz, 
and  under  the  inspection  of  officers  appointed  by  the  crown. 
Those  who  embarked  for  Hispaniola  without  pay,  and  at  their 
own  expense,  were  to  have  lands  assigned  to  them,  and  to  be  provi- 
sioned for  one  year,  with  a  right  to  retain  such  lands  and  all  houses 
they  might  erect  upon  them.  Of  all  goid  which  they  might  collect, 
they  were  to  retain  one  third  for  themselves,  and  pay  two  thirds 
to  the  crown.  Of  all  other  articles  of  merchandise,  the  produce 
of  the  island,  they  were  to  pay  merely  one  tenth  ^o  the  crown. 
Tlieir  purchases  were  to  be  made  in  the  presence  of  officers  ap- 
pointed by  the  sovereigns,  and  the  royal  duties  paid  into  the  hands 
of  the  king's  receiver.  Each  ship  sailing  on  private  enterprise 
was  to  take  one  or  two  persons  named  by  the  royal  officers  at 
Cadiz.  One  tenth  of  the  tonnage  of  the  ship  was  to  be  at  the  ser- 
vice of  the  crown,  free  of  charge.     One  teuth  of  whatever  such 


S: 


. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      487 


this  ediet,  inasmuch  as  he  deemed  himself  entitled 
to  a  patent  or  monoixdy  in  the  work  of  e()nduetin<^ 
expeditions  to  Cathay.  The  soverc^ijjfns  evaded  the 
difficulty  by  an  edict  of  Junc^  2,  1407,  declaring 
that  it  was  never  thi»ir  intention  "in  any  way  to 
affect  the  rights  of  the  said  Don  Christo})her  Colum- 
bus." Tliis  declaration  was,  doubtless,  intended 
simply  to  pacify  the  Admiral.  It  did  not  prevent 
the  authorization  of  voyages  conducted  by  other 
persons  a  couple  of  years  later;  and,  as  I  shall 
show  in  the  next  chapter,  there  are  strong  reasons 
for  believing  that  on  May  10,  1497,  three  weeks 
before  this  edict,  an  expedition  sailed  from  Cadiz 
under  the  especial  auspices  of  King  Ferdinand, 
with  Vicente  Yanez  Pinzon  for  its  chief  conmiander 
and  Americus  Vespu(;ius  for  one  of  its  pilots. 

It  was  not  until  late  in  the  spring  of  1498  that 
the  ships  were  ready  for  Columbus.  Everything 
that  Fonseoa  could  do  to  vex  and  delay 
him  was  done, 
minions, 

named  Ximeno  Breviesca,  behaved  with  such  out- 
rageous insolence  that  on  the  day  of  sailing  the 
Admiral's  indignation,  so  long  restrained,  at  last 
broke  out,  and  he  drove  away  the  fellow  with  kicks 
and  cuffs.  ^     This  imprudent  act  gave  Fonseca  the 

ships  should  procure  in  the  newly-discovered  countries  was  to  be 
paid  to  the  crown  on  their  return.  These  regulations  included 
private  ships  trading  to  Hispaniola  with  provisions.  For  every 
vessel  thus  fitted  out  on  private  adventnre,  Columbus,  in  consider- 
ation of  his  privilege  of  an  eiglith  of  tonnage,  was  to  have  the 
right  to  freight  one  on  his  own  account."  Irving's  Columbus,  vol. 
ii.  p.  70. 

^  "  Parece  que  uno  debiera  de,  en  estos  reveses,  y,  por  ventura, 
on  paldbras  contra  ^1  y  contra  la  negociacion  destas  Indias,  mas 


Columbti8 
One     of     the     bisho])  S    loses  Ws  tem- 

^  per. 

a    converted    Moor    or    Jew 


488  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

opportunity  to  maintain  that  what  the  Admiral's 
accusers  said  about  his  tyrannical  disposition  must 
be  true. 

The  expedition  started  on*  May  30,  1498,  from 
the  little  port  of  San  Lucar  de  Barrameda.  There 
The  third  wcro  six  sliips,  Carrying  about  200  mer 
voyage.  bcsidcs  the  sailors.     On  June  21,  at  the 

Isle  of  Ferro,  the  Admiral  divided  his  fleet,  send- 
ing three  ships  directly  to  Hispaniola,  while  with 
the  other  three  he  kept  on  to  the  Cape  Verde  is- 
lands, whence  he  steered  southwest  on  the  4th  of 
July.  A  week  later,  after  a  run  of  about  900 
miles,  his  astrolabe  seemed  to  show  that  he  was 
within  five  degrees  of  the  equator.^  There  were 
three  reasons  for  going  so  far  to  the  south :  —  1, 
the  natives  of  the  islands  already  visited  always 

que  otro  seiialarse,  y  seg^n  entendl,  no  debiera  ser  cristiano  yiejo, 
y  creo  que  se  llamaba  Xinieno,  contra  el  cual  debi6  el  Almirante 
gravemente  sentirae  y  enojarse,  y  aguardd  el  dia  que  se  hizo  &  la 
vela,  y,  6  en  la  nao  que  entr6,  por  ventura,  el  dicho  oficial,  6  en 
tierra  quando  queria  desembarcai-se,  arrebat61o  el  Almirante,  y 
ddle  muchas  coces  6  remesones,  por  raanera  que  lo  trat6  mal ;  y  & 
mi  parecer,  por  esta  causa  principalmente,  sobre  otras  quejas  que 
fueron  de  acd,  y  cosas  que  mumiuraron  d^l  y  contra  ^1  los  que 
bien  con  ^1  no  estaban  y  le  acinnularon ;  los  Reyes  indignados  pro- 
veyeron  de  qnitarle  Ir-  gobernacion."  Las  Casas,  Historia  de  las 
Indias,  torn.  ii.  p.  199. 

^  The  figure  given  by  Columbus  is  equivalent  only  to  360  geo- 
graphical miles  (Navarrete,  Coleccion,  tom.  i.  p.  240),  but  as  Las 
Casas  (Hist.  tom.  ii.  p.  22(5)  already  noticed,  there  must  be  some 
mistake  here,  for  on  a  S.  W.  course  from  the  Cape  Verde  islands 
it  would  require  a  distance  of  000  geographical  miles  to  cut  the 
fifth  parallel.  From  the  weather  that  followed,  it  is  clear  that 
Columbus  stated  hi.s  latitude  pretty  correctly ;  lie  had  come  into 
the  belt  of  calms.  Therefore  his  error  must  be  in  the  distauco 
run. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      489 


geo- 
Las 


that 


11C6 


pointed  in  that  direction  when  gold  was  mentioned ; 
2,  a  learned  jeweller,  who  had  travelled  in  the 
East,  had  assured  Columbus  that  gold  and  gems, 
as  well  as  spices  and  rare  drugs,  were  to  be  found 
for  the  most  part  among  black  peoi)le  near  the 
equator;  3,  if  he  should  not  find  any  rich  islands 
on  the  way,  a  sufficiently  long  voyage  would  bring 
him  to  the  coast  of  Champa  (Cochin  China)  at  a 
lower  point  than  he  had  reached  on  the  preceding 
voyage,  and  nearer  to  the  Golden  Chersonese 
(Malacca),  by  doubling  which  he  could  enter  the 
Indian  ocean.  It  will  be  remembered  that  he  sup- 
posed the  southwesterly  curve  in  the  Cuban  coast, 
the  farthest  point  reached  in  his  second  voyage,  to 
be  the  beginning  of  the  coast  of  Cochin  China 
according  to  Marco  Polo. 

Once  more  through  ignorance  of  the  atmos- 
pheric conditions  of  the  regions  within  the  tropics 
Columbus  encountered  needless  perils  and  hard- 
ships. If  he  had  steered  from  Ferro  straight 
across  the  ocean  a  trifle  south  of  west-southwest, 
he  might  have  made  a  quick  and  comfortable  voy- 
age, with  the  trade-wind  filling  his  sails,  to  the 
spot  where  he  actually  struck  land.^  As  it  was, 
however,  he  naturally  followed  tht  custom  then  so 
common,  of  first  running  to  the  parallel  Tiicbeitof 
upon  which  he  intended  to  sail.  This  *'''''"^" 
long  southerly  run  brought  him  into  the  belt  of 
cahns  or  neutral  zone  between  the  northern  and 
southern  trade-winds,  a  little  north  of  the  equator.^ 

^  Humboldt  in  1791)  «licl  just  this  thing,  starting  from  Teneriffe 
and  reaching  Trinidad  in  nineteen  days.  See  Bruhn's  Life  of 
Humboldt,  vol.  i.  p.  2G3. 

2  *'The  strength  of  the  trade-winds  depends  entirely  upon  tho 


,    .1 

Mi 


490  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

No  words  can  describe  what  followed  so  well  as 
those  of  Irving :  "  The  wind  suddenly  fell,  and  a 
dead  sultry  calm  commenced,  which  lasted  for 
eight  days.  The  air  was  like  a  furnace ;  the  tar 
melted,  the  seams  of  the  ship  yawned;  the  salt 
meat  became  putrid ;  the  wheat  was  parched  as  if 
with  fire;  the  hoops  shrank  from  the  wine  and 
water  casks,  some  of  which  leaked  and  others 
burst,  while  the  heat  in  the  holds  of  the  vessels 
was  so  suffocating  that  no  one  could  remain  below 
a  sufficient  time  to  prevent  the  damage  that  was 
taking  place.  The  mariners  lost  all  strength  and 
spirits,  and  sank  under  the  oppressive  heat.  It 
seemed  as  if  the  old  fable  of  the  torrid  zone  was 
aboujb  to  be  realized ;  and  that  they  were  approach- 
ing a  fiery  region  where  it  woidd  be  impossible  to 
exist."! 

Fortunately,  they  were  in  a  region  where  the 
ocean  is  comparatively  narrow.  The  longitude 
reached  by  Columbus  on  July  13,  when  the  wind 
died  away,  must  have  been  about  30°  or  37°  W., 

difference  in  temperature  between  the  equator  and  the  pole  ;  the 
greater  the  difference,  the  stronger  the  wind.  Now,  at  the  present 
time,  the  south  pole  is  much  colder  than  the  north  pole,  and  the 
southern  trades  are  consequently  much  stronger  than  the  northern, 
so  that  the  neutral  zone  in  which  they  meet  lies  surne  five  degrees 
north  of  the  equator."     Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,  p.  04. 

^  Irving's  Columbus,  vol.  ii.  p.  l;}7.    One  is  reminded  of  a  sceuB 
in  the  Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner:  — 

"  All  in  a  hot  and  copper  sky 

The  bloody  sun,  at  noon, 

Right  up  above  the  mast  did  stand, 

No  bigger  than  the  moon. 

"  Day  after  day,  day  after  day. 
We  stu'jlt,  —  nor  breatli  nor  luotion; 
As  idle  as  a  painted  ship 
Upon  a  painted  ocean." 


. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      491 


and  a  nm  of  only  800  miles  west  from  that  point 
would  have  brought  him  to  Cayenne.  His  course 
between  the  13th  and  21st  of  July  must  have  in- 
tersected the  thermal  equator,  or  line  of  greatest 
mean  annual  heat  on  the  globe,  —  an  irregular 
curve  which  is  here  deflected  as  much  as  five 
degrees  north  of  the  equinoctial  line.  But  although 
there  was  not  a  breath  of  wind,  the  powerfid  equa- 
torial current  was  quietly  driving  the  ships,  much 
faster  than  the  Admiral  could  have  suspected,  to 
the  northwest  and  toward  land.  By  the  end  of 
that  stifling  week  they  were  in  latitude  7°  N.,  and 
caught  the  trade-wind  on  the  starboard  quarter. 
Thence  after  a  brisk  run  of  ten  days,  in  sorry 
plight,  with  ugly  leaks  and  scarcely  a  cask  of  fresh 
water  left,  they  arrived  within  sight  of  land. 
Three  mountain  peakH  loomed  up  in  the  offing 
before  them,  and  as  they  drew  nearer  it  appeared 
that  those  peaks  belonged  to  one  great  mountain ; 
wherefore  the  pious  Admiral  named  the  island 
Trinidad. 

Here  some  surprises  were  in  store  for  Columbus. 
Instead  of  finding  black  and  woolly -haired  natives, 
he  found  men  of  cinnamon  hue,  like  Trinidad  and 
those  in  Hispaniola,  only  —  strange  to  '^^  Orinoco. 
say  —  lighter  in  colour.  Then  in  coasting  Trini- 
dad he  caught  a  glimpse  of  land  at  the  delta  of  the 
Orinoco,  and  called  it  Isla  Santa,  or  Holy  Island.^ 

*  He  "gave  it  the  name  of  Isla  Santa,"  says  Irving  (vol.  ii. 
p.  140),  "little  imagining  that  he  now,  for  the  first  time,  beheld 
that  continent,  that  Terra  Firma,  which  had  been  the  object  of  his, 
earnest  search."  The  reader  of  this  passage  should  bear  in  mind 
iJiat  the  continent  of  South  America,  which  nobody  had  ever 
heard  of,  was  not  the  object  of  Columbus's  search.     The  Terra 


492  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

But,  on  passing  into  the  gulf  of  Paria,  through 
the  strait  which  he  named  Serpent's  Mouth,  his 
ships  were  in  sore  danger  of  being  swamped  by  the 
raging  surge  that  poured  from  three  or  four  of  the 
lesser  mouths  of  that  stupendous  river.  Presently, 
finding  that  the  water  in  the  gulf  was  fresh  to  the 
taste,  he  gradually  reasoned  his  way  to  the  correct 
conclusion,  that  the  billows  which  had  so  nearly 
overwhelmed  him  must  have  come  out  from  a  river 
greater  than  any  he  had  ever  known  or  dreamed 
of,  and  that  so  vast  a  stream  of  running  water 
could  be  produced  only  upon  land  of  continental 
dimensions.^  This  coast  to  the  south  of  him  was, 
therefore,  the  coast  of  a  continent,  with  indefinite 
extension  toward  the  south,  a  land  not  laid  down 
upon  Toscanelli's  or  any  other  map,  and  of  which 
no  one  had  until  that  time  known  anything.  ^ 

Firma  which  was  the  object  of  his  search  was  the  mainland  of 
Asia,  and  that  he  never  beheld,  though  he  felt  positively  sure 
that  he  had  already  set  foot  upon  it  in  1492  and  1494. 

^  A  modern  traveller  thus  describes  this  river:  "Right  and 
left  of  us  laj',  at  some  distance  off,  the  low  banks  of  the  Apur^,  at 
this  point  quite  a  broad  stream.  But  before  us  the  waters  spread 
out  like  a  wide  dark  flood,  limited  on  the  horizon  only  by  a  low 
black  streak,  and  here  and  there  showing  a  few  distant  hills. 
TL\8  was  the  Orinoco,  rolling  with  irrepressible  power  and  ma- 
jesty sea-wards,  and  often  upheaving  its  billows  like  the  ocean 
when  lashed  to  fury  by  the  wind.  .  .  .  The  Orinoco  sends  a  cur- 
rent of  fresh  water  far  into  the  ocean,  its  waters  —  generally  green, 
but  in  the  shallows  milk-white  —  contrasting  sharply  with  the  in- 
digo blue  of  the  surrounding  sea."  Bates,  Central  America,  the 
West  Indies,  arid  South  America,  2d  ed.,  London,  1882,  pp.  284, 
235.  The  island  of  Trinidad  forms  an  obstacle  to  the  escape  of 
i^ia  huge  volume  of  fresh  water,  and  hence  the  furious  commo- 
^on  at  the  two  outlets,  the  Serpent's  Mouth  and  Dragon's  Mouth, 
^peciiiUy  in  July  and  August,  when  the  Orinoco  is  swollen  with 
tropical  rains. 

"  In  Columbus's  own  words,  in  his  letter  to  the  sovereigns  de< 


494  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

In  spite  of  the  correctness  of  this  surmise,  Colum- 
bus was  still  as  far  from  a  true  interpretation  of 
the  whole  situation  as  when  he  supposed  Ilispaniola 
to  be  Opliir.  He  entered  upon  a  series  of  specula- 
tions which  forcibly  remind  us  how  empirical  was 
the  notion  of  the  earth's  rotundity  before  the  inau- 
guration of  physical  astronomy  by  Gal- 
as  CO  the  ileo,    Jvepler,  and   JNewton.      We   now 

know  that  our  planet  has  the  only  shape 
possible  for  such  a  rotating  mass  that  once  was 
fluid  or  nebulous,  the  shape  of  a  spheroid  slightly 
protuberant  at  the  equator  and  flattened  at  the 
poles ;  but  this  knowledge  is  the  outcome  of  mechan- 
ical principles  utterly  unknown  and  unsuspected  in 
the  days  of  Columbus.  He  understood  that  the 
earth  is  a  round  body,  but  saw  no  necessity  for  its 
being  strictly  spherical  or  spheroidal.  He  now 
suggested  that  it  was  probably  sliaped  like  a  pear, 
rather  a  blunt  and  corpulent  pear,  nearly  spher- 
ical in  its  lower  part,  but  with  a  short,  stubby 
apex  in  the  equatorial  region  somewhere  beyond 
the  point  which  he  had  just  reached.  He  fancied 
he  had  been  sailing  up  a  gentle  slope  from  the 
burning  glassy  sea  where  his  ships  had  been  be- 
cabned  to  t^  is  strange  and  beautiful  coast  where 
The  mountain  ^^^  found  the  climatc  enchanting.  K 
of  Paradise.  j^g  wcrc  to  follow  up  the  mighty  river 
just  now  revealed,  it  might  lead  him  to  the  sum- 
mit of  this  apex  of  the  world,  the  place  where  the 
terrestrial  paradise,  the  Garden  which  the  Lord 

scribing  this  third  voyage,  "  Y  digo  que  .  .  .  viene  este  no  y  pro- 
cede  de  tierra  infinita,  piies  al  austro,  de  la  cnal  fasta  agora  no  se 
ha  babido  uoticia."    Navarrete,  Coleccion,  torn.  i.  p.  262. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      495 


planted  eastward  in  Eden,  was  in  all  probability 
situated !  ^ 

As  Columbus  still  held  to  the  opinion  that  by 
keeping  to  the  west  from  that  point  he  should  soon 
reach  the  coast  of  Cochin  China,  his  Rebt'onofthe 
conception  of  the  position  of  Eden  is  nent""to'"Co- 
thus  pretty  clearly  indicated.  He  im-  <=»""  China." 
agined  it  as  situated  about  on  the  equator,  upon  a 
continental  mass  till  then  unknown,  but  evidently 
closely  connected  with  the  continent  of  Asia  if  not 
a  part  of  it.  If  he  had  lived  long  enough  to  hear 
of  Quito  and  its  immense  elevation,  I  should  sup- 
pose that  might  very  well  have  suited  his  idea  of 
the  position  of  Eden.  The  coast  of  this  continent, 
upon  which  he  had  now  arrived,  was  either  contin- 
uous with  the  coast  of  Cochin  China  (Cuba)  and 
Malacca,  or  would  be  found  to  be  divided  from  it 
by  a  strait  through  which  one  might  pass  directly 
into  the  Indian  ocean. 

It  took  some  little  time  for  this  theory  to  come 
to  maturity  in  the  mind  of  Columbus.  Not  expect- 
ing to  find  any  mainland  in  that  quarter,  j^^  p^^i 
he  began  by  calling  different  points  of  ^°'^^' 
the  coast  di'^'-ient  isiilands.  Coming  out  through 
the  passage  wL  eh  he  named  Dragon's  Mouth,  he 
caught  dista' O^  glimpses  of  Tobago  and  Grenada  to 
starboard,  and  turning  westward  followed  the  Pearl 
Coast  as  far  as  the  islands  of  Margarita  and  Cuba- 

^  Thus  would  be  explained  the  astounding^  force  with  which 
the  water  was  poured  down.  It  was  common  in  the  Midd;e  Ages 
to  imagine  the  terrestial  paradise  at  the  top  of  a  mountain.  Seo 
Dante,  Purgatorio,  canto  xxvi'i.  Columbus  quotes  many  authori- 
ties in  favour  of  liis  opini'  The  whole  letter  is  wortli  reading. 
See  Navarrete,  torn.  i.  pp.  .  i. 


''i 


mi 


496  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

gua.  The  fine  pearls  which  he  found  there  in 
abundance  confirmed  him  in  the  good  opinion  he 
had  formed  of  that  country.  By  this  time,  the 
15th  of  August,  he  had  so  far  put  facts  together  as 
to  become  convinced  of  the  continental  character 
of  that  coast,  and  would  have  been  glad  to  pursue 
it  westward.  But  now  his  strength  gave  out.  Dur- 
ing most  of  the  voyage  he  had  suffered  acute  tor- 
ments with  gout,  his  temperature  had  been  very 
feverish,  and  his  eyes  were  at  length  so  exhausted 
with  perpetual  watching  that  he  could  no  longer 
make  observations.  So  he  left  the  coast  a  little 
beyond  Cubagua,  and  steered  straight  for  Hispan- 

Arrivai  at  San  ^^^^'>  aiming  at  San  Domingo,  but  hit- 
Domingo.        ^^^^  ^j^^  ^^^^^^  ^f  ^^^^^  bccausc  he  did 

not  make  allowance  for  the  westerly  flow  of  the 
currents.  He  arrived  at  San  Domingo  on  the  30th 
of  August,  and  found  his  brother  Bartholomew, 
whom  he  intended  to  send  at  once  on  a  further 
cruise  along  the  Pearl  Coast,  while  he  himself 
should  be  resting  and  recovering  strength. 

But  alas !  there  was  to  be  no  cruising  now  for 
the  younger  brother  nor  rest  for  the  elder.  It  was 
Roidan's  ^  sad  story  that  Bartholomew  had  to 
rebellion.        ^g^     ^^j.  ^^j^j^  ^^ie  Indians  had  broken 

out  afresh,  and  while  the  Adelantado  was  engaged 
in  this  business  a  scoundrel  named  Roldan  had 
taken  advantage  of  his  absence  to  stir  up  civil 
strife.  Roidan's  rebellion  was  a  result  of  the  ill- 
advised  mission  of  Aguado.  The  malcontents  in 
the  colony  interpreted  the  Admiral's  long  stay  in 
Spain  as  an  indication  that  he  had  lost  favour  with 
the  sovereigns  and  was  not  coming  back  to  the  is- 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      497 

land.  Gathering  together  a  strong  body  of  rebels, 
Koldan  retired  to  Xaragiia  and  formed  an  alliance 
with  the  brother  of  the  late  chieftain  Caonabo. 
By  the  time  the  Admiral  arrived  the  combination 
of  mutiny  with  barbaric  warfare  had  brought  about 
a  frightful  state  of  things.  A  party  of  soldiers, 
sent  by  him  to  suppress  Roldan,  straightway 
deserted  and  joined  that  rebel.  It  thus  became 
necessary  to  come  to  terms  with  Roldan,  and  this 
revelation  of  the  weakness  of  the  government  only 
made  matters  worse.  Two  wretched  years  were 
passed  in  attempts  to  restore  order  in  Ilispaniola, 
while  the  work  of  discovery  and  exploration  was 
postponed.  Meanwhile  the  items  of  information 
that  found  their  way  to  Spain  were  skilfully 
employed  by  Fonseca  in  poisoning  the  Fonseca's 
minds  of  the  sovereigns,  until  at  last  "^bin"""'^ 
they  decided  to  send  out  a  judge  to  the  island, 
armed  with  plenary  authority  to  make  investiga- 
tions and  settle  disputes.  The  glory  which  Colum- 
bus had  won  by  the  first  news  of  the  discovery  of 
the  Indies  had  now  to  some  extent  faded  away. 
The  enterprise  yielded  as  yet  no  revenue  and  en- 
tailed great  expense ;  and  whenever  some  reprobate 
found  his  way  back  to  Spain,  the  malicious  Fon- 
seca prompted  him  to  go  to  the  treasury  with  a 
claim  for  pay  alleged  to  have  been  wrongfully  with- 
held by  the  Admiral.  Ferdinand  Columbus  tells 
how  some  fifty  sucli  scamps  were  gathered  one  day 
in  the  courtyard  of  the  Alhambra,  cursing  his 
father  and  catching  hold  of  the  king's  robe,  cry- 
ing, "Pay  us!  pay  us!  "  and  as  he  and  his  brother 
Diego,  who  were  pages  in  the  queen's  service,  hap- 


498  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA, 

pened  to  pass  by,  they  were  greeted  with  hoots :  — 
"There  go  the  soiih  of  the  Admiral  of  Mosquito- 
land,  the  man  who  has  discovered  a  land  of  vanity 
and  deceit,  the  grave  of  Spanish  gentlemen!  "^ 

An  added  sting  was  given  to  such  taunts  by  a 

great  event  that  happened  about  this  time.    In  the 

summer  of  1497,  Vasco  da  Gama  started 

Gama  8  voy- 

Bg(^  to  Bin-      f rom  Lisbou  for  the  Ca])e  of  Good  Hope, 

duston,  1497.  , 

and  in  the  summer  of  1499  he  returned, 
after  having  doubled  the  cape  and  crossed  the 
Indian  ocean  to  Calicut  on  the  Malabar  coast  of 
Hindustan.  His  voyage  was  the  next  Portuguese 
step  sequent  upon  that  of  Bartholomew  Dias. 
There  was  nothing  questionable  or  dubious  about 
Gama's  triumph.  He  had  seen  splendid  cities, 
talked  with  a  powerful  Rajah,  and  met  with  Arab 
vessels,  their  crews  madly  jealous  at  the  unprece- 
dented sight  of  Christian  ships  in  those  waters; 
and  he  brought  back  with  him  to  Lisbon  nutmegs 
and  cloves,  pepper  and  ginger,  rubies  and  emeralds, 
damask  robes  with  satin  linings,  bronze  chairs 
with  cushions,  trumpets  of  carved  ivory,  a  sun- 
shade of  crimson  satin,  a  sword  in  a  silver  scab- 
bard, and  no  end  of  such  gear.^  An  old  civiliza- 
tion had  been  found  and  a  route  of  commerce 
discovered,  and  a  factory  was  to  be  set  up  at  once 
on  that  Indian  coast.  What  a  contrast  to  the  mis- 
erable performance  of  Columbus,  who  had  started 
with  the  flower  of   Spain's  chivalry  for  rich  Ci- 

1  "  Ecco  i  figUuoli  dell'  Ammiraf^lio  de'  Mosciolini,  di  colui  che 
ha  trovate  terre  di  vanitd  e  d'  inganiio,  per  sepoltura  e  miseria  de' 
gentilnomini  castigliani."     Vita  delV  Ammiraglio,  cap.  Ixxxiv. 

^  Major,  Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,  pp.  398-401. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      499 

pango,  and  had  only  led  them  to  a  land  where  they 
must  either  starve  or  do  work  fit  for  peasants,  while 
he  spent  his  time  in  cruising  among  wild  islands ! 
The  king  of  Portugal  could  now  snap  his  fingers 
at  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  and  if  a  doubt  should 
have  sometimes  crossed  the  minds  of  those  cha- 
grined sovereigns,  as  to  whether  this  plausible  Ge- 
noese mariner  might  not,  after  all,  be  a  humbug  or 
a  crazy  enthusiast,  we  can  hardly  wonder  at  it. 

The  person  sent  to  investigate  the  affairs  of  His- 
paniola  was  Francisco  de  Bobadilla,  a  knight  com- 
mander of  the  order  of  Calatrava.     lie 
carried  several  documents,  one  of  them  ( reuture, 

-,.         ..         !•.  !•  ••  1  Bobadilla. 

directing  liiiii  to  make  inquiries  and  pun- 
ish offenders,  another  containing  his  appointment 
as  governor,  a  third  commanding  Columbus  and 
his  brothers  to  surrender  to  him  all  fortresses  and 
other  public  property.  ^  The  two  latter  papers 
were  to  be  used  only  in  case  of  such  grave  mis- 
conduct proved  against  Columbus  as  to  justify  his 
removal  from  the  government.  These  papers  were 
made  out  in  the  spring  of  1499,  but  Bobadilla  was 
not  Sent  out  until  July,  1500.  When  he  arrived 
at  San  Domingo  on  the  23d  of  August,  the  insur- 
rection had  been  suppressed;  the  Atbniral  and 
Bartholomew  were  bringing  things  into  order  in 
distant  parts  of  the  island,  while  Diego  was  left  in 
command  at  San  Domingo.  Seven  ringleaders 
had  just  been  hanged,  and  five  more  were  in  jirison 
under  sentence  of  death.     If  Bobadilla  had  not 


^  The  documents  are  given  in  Navarrete,  Coleccion  de  viages, 
torn.  ii.  pp.  235-240 ;  and,  with  accompanying  narrative,  in  Las 
Casas,  Hist,  de  las  Lidias,  torn.  ii.  pp.  472-487. 


500 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


come  upon  tlie  scene  this  wholesome  lesson  might 
have  worked  some  improvement  in  affairs. ^  lie 
destroyed  its  moral  in  a  twinkling;.  The  first  day 
after  landing,  he  read  aloud,  at  the  church  door, 
the  pai)er  directing  him  to  make  inquiries  and  pun- 
ish offenders;  and  forthwith  demanded  of  Diego 
Columbus  that  the  condenmed  j)risoners  should  bo 
delivered  up  to  him.  Diego  declined  to  take  so 
important  a  step  until  he  could  get  orders  from  tlie 
Admiral.  Next  day  Bobadilla  read  his  second  and 
thirtl  papers,  proclaimed  himself  governor,  called 
on  Diego  to  surrender  the  fortress  and  public 
buildings,  and  renewed  his  demand  for  the  prison- 
ers. As  Diego  still  hesitated  to  act  before  news* 
of  these  proceedings  could  be  sent  to  his  brother, 
Bobadilla  l)roke  into  the  fortress,  took  the  prison- 
ers oui;,  and  presently  set  them  free.  All  the  re- 
bellious spirits  in  the  colony  were  thus  drawn  to  the 
side  of  Bobadilla,  whose  royal  commission,  under 
such  circumstances,  gave  him  irresistible  power, 
lie  threw  Diego  into  prison  and  loaded  him  with 
fetters.  He  seized  the  Admiral's  house,  and  con- 
fiscated all  his  personal  property,  even  including 
his  business  papers  and  private  letters.  When  the 
Admiral  arrived  in  San  Domingo,  Bobadilla,  with- 
out even  waiting  to  see  him,  sent  an  officer  to  put 
7oiumbu8in  ^^"^  ^^^  irous  and  take  him  to  prison. 
eiiams.  When  Bartholomew  arrived,  he  received 

the   same   treatment.      The   three   brothers   were 


^  No  better  justification  for  the  g^overnment  of  the  brothers  Co- 
lumbus can  be  found  than  to  contrast  it  with  the  infinitely  worse 
state  of  affairs  that  ensued  under  the  adniinistratious  of  Bobadilla 
and  Ovandj.    See  below,  vol.  ii.  pp.  435-446. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STIiANGE  COASTS.     501 


•on- 


put 
son. 
ived 
■were 

svorse 
idilla 


confined  in  different  jdaces,  nol)ody  was  allowed  to 
visit  them,  and  they  were  not  informed  of  the 
offenees  with  wliieh  they  were  charj^ed.  While 
they  lay  in  prison,  Bobadilla  busied  liimself  with 
inventing  an  exeuse  for  this  violent  behaviour. 
Finally  he  hit  upon  one  at  whieli  Satan  from  tlie 
depths  of  his  bottondess  pit  must  have  grimly 
smiled.  He  said  that  he  had  arrested  and  impris- 
oned the  brothers  only  beeause  he  had  reason  to 
believe  they  were  ineiting  the  Indians  to  aid  them 
in  resisting  the  commands  of  Ferdinand  and  Isa- 
bella ! !  In  short,  from  the  day  of  his  landing 
Bobadilla  made  common  cause  with  the  insurgent 
rabble,  and  when  they  had  furnished  him  with  a 
ream  or  so  of  charges  against  the  Admiral  and  his 
brothers,  it  seemed  safe  to  send  these  gentlemen  to 
Spain.  They  were  put  on  board  ship,  with  their 
fetters  upon  them,  and  the  officer  in  charge  was 
instructed  by  Bobadilla  to  deliver  them  into  the 
hands  of  Bisliop  Fonseca,  who  was  thus  to  have  the 
privilege  of  glutting  to  the  full  his  revengeful  spite. 
The  master  of  the  ship,  shocked  at  the  sight  o£ 
fetters  upon  such  a  man  as  the  Admiral,  would 
have  taken  them  olT,  but  Columbus  Upturn  to 
would  not  let  it  be  done.  No,  indeed !  ^^'""* 
they  should  never  come  off  excei)t  by  order  of  the 
sovereigns,  and  then  he  would  keep  them  for  the 
rest  of  his  life,  to  show  how  his  labours  had  been 
rewarded.^  The  event  —  w^hich  always  justifies 
true  manliness  —  proved  the  sagacity  of  this  proud 

^  Las  Casas,  Hist,  de  las  Jndias,  torn.  ii.  p.  501 ;  F.  Columbus, 
Vita  deW  Ammiraglio,  cap.  Ixxxv.  Ferdinand  adds  that  he  had 
often  seen  these  fetters  hanging  in  his  father's  room. 


602  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

demeanour.  Fonseca  was  baulked  of  his  gratltica- 
tion.  The  clumsy  Bobadilla  had  overdone  the 
business.  The  sight  of  the  Admiral's  stately  and 
venerable  figure  in  chains,  as  he  passed  through 
the  streets  of  Cadiz,  on  a  December  day  of  that 
year  1500,  awakened  a  popular  outburst  of  sym- 
pathy for  him  and  indignation  at  his  persecutors. 
While  on  the  ship  he  had  written  or  dictated  a 
beautiful  and  touching  letter  ^  to  a  lady  of  whom 
the  queen  was  fond,  the  former  nurse  of  the  Infante, 
whose  untimely  death,  three  years  since,  his  mother 
was  still  mourning.  This  letter  reached  the  court 
at  Granada,  and  was  read  to  the  queen  before  she 
had  heard  of  Bobadilla's  performances  from  any 
other  quarter.  A  courier  was  sent  in  all  haste  to 
Cadiz,  with  orders  that  the  brothers  should  at  once 
be  released,  and  with  a  letter  to  the  Admiral, 
inviting  him  to  court  and  enclosing  an  order  for 
money  to  cover  liis  expenses.  The  scene  in  the 
Release  of  AUiambra,  when  Columbus  arrived,  is 
Columbus.        Q^Q  q£    ^i^g  itiost   touching   in  history. 

Isab(3lla  received  him  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  and 
then  this  much-enduring  old  man,  whose  proud  and 
masterful  spirit  had  so  long  been  proof  against  all 
wrongs  and  insults,  broke  dowii.  He  threw  him- 
self at  the  feet  of  the  sovereigns  in  an  agony  of 
tears  and  sobs.^ 

How  far  the  sovereigns  should  be  held  resi)onsi- 
ble  for  the  behaviour  of  their  agent  is  t  ot  alto» 
gether  easy  to  determine.  The  ap^:<ointment  of  such 
a  creature  as  Bobadilla  was  a  sad  blunder,  but  one 

^  It  is  {jiven  in  full  in  Las  Casas,  op.  cit.  tor.i.  ii.  pp.  502-510. 
^  Ilerrera,  Historia,  dec.  i.  lib.  iv.  cap.  10. 


\  .- 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      503 

such  as  is  liable  to  bt  made  under  any  govern- 
ment. Fonseca  was  very  powerful  at  ^low  far  were 
court,  and  Bobadilla  never  would  have  respmw'ibie^* 
dared  to  proceed  as  he  did  if  he  had  f"'B«badiiiaT 
not  known  that  the  bishop  would  support  him. 
Indeed,  from  the  indecent  haste  with  which  he 
went  about  his  work,  without  even  the  pretence  of 
a  judicial  inquiry,  it  is  probable  that  he  started 
with  private  instructions  from  that  quarter.  But, 
while  Fonseca  had  some  of  the  wisdom  along  with 
the  venom  of  the  serpent,  Bobadilla  was  simply  a 
jackass,  and  behaved  so  that  in  common  decency 
the  sovereigns  were  obliged  to  disown  him.  They 
took  no  formal  or  public  notice  of  his  written  charges 
against  the  Admiral,  and  they  assured  the  latter 
that  he  should  be  reimbursed  for  his  losses  and 
restored  to  his  vieeroyalty  and  other  dignities. 

This   last  promise,  however,  was  not  fulfilled; 
partly,  perhaps,  because  Fonseca' s  influence  was 
still  strong  enough  to  prevent  it,  partly  because  the 
sovereigns  may  have  come  to  the  sound  and  rea- 
sonable conclusion  that  for  the  present  there  was  no 
use  in  committing  the  government  of  that  disor- 
derly rabble  in  Hispaniola  to  a  foreigner.      What 
was  wanted  was  a  Spanish  priest,  and  a  military 
priest  withal,  of  the  sort  that  Spain  then  had  in 
plenty.     Obedience  to  priests  en.me  nat-  ovando  an- 
ural  to  Spaniards.  The  man  now  selected  f^ZntclT 
was  Nicolas  de  Ovando,  a  knight  com-  g^Pemor'^of 
mander  of  the  order  of  Alcantara,  of  H'^p*'^'»'«- 
whom  we  shall  have  more  to  say  hereafter.^    Suffice 
it  now  to  observe  that  he  proved  l.Imself  a  famous 

1  See  below,  voL  ii.  pp.  435-446. 


504  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

disciplinarian,  and  that  he  was  a  great  favourite 
with  Fonseca,  to  whom  he  seems  to  have  owed  his 
appointment.  He  went  out  in  February,  io02, 
with  a  fleet  of  thirty  ships  carrying  2,500  persons, 
for  the  pendulum  of  public  opinion  had  taken  an= 
other  swing,  and  faith  in  the  Indies  was  renewed. 
Some  great  discoveries,  to  be  related  in  the  next 
chapter,  had  been  made  since  1498 ;  and,  moreover, 
the  gold  mines  of  Hispaniola  were  beginning  to 
yield  rich  treasures. 

But,  while  the  sovereigns  were  not  disposed  to 

restore   Columbus  to   his   viceroyalty,  they   were 

quite  ready  to  send  him  on  another  voy- 

Purpose  of  «    , .  i  •   i  t         ,i 

coiunibus'a  agc  01  Qiscovcry  which  was  directly  sug- 
gested by  the  recent  Portuguese  voyage 
of  Gama.  Since  nothing  was  yet  known  about 
the  discovery  of  a  New  World,  the  achievement  of 
Gama  seemed  to  have  eclipsed  that  of  Columbus. 
Spain  must  make  a  resjionse  to  Portugal.  As 
already  observed,  the  Admiral  sujiposed  the  coast 
of  his  "Eden  continent"  (South  America)  either 
to  be  continuous  with  the  coast  of  Cochin  China 
(Cuba)  and  Malacca,  or  else  to  be  divided  from 
that  coast  by  a  strait.  The  latter  opinion  was  the 
more  probable,  since  Marco  Polo  and  a  few  other 
Europeans  had  sailed  from  China  into  the  Indian 
ocean  without  encountering  any  great  continent 
that  had  to  be  circumnavigated.  The  recent  expe- 
dition of  Vespucius  and  Ojeda  (14^9-1500)  had 
followed  the  northern  coast  of  South  America  for 
a  long  distance  to  the  west  of  Cubagua,  as  far  as 
the  gulf  of  Maracaibo.  Columbus  now  decided  to 
return  to  the  coast  of  Cochin  China  (Cuba)  and 


V 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      505 

follow  the  coast  southwestward  until  he  should  find 
the  passage  between  his  Eden  continent  and  the 
Golden  Chersonese  (Malacca)  into  the  Indian 
ocean.  He  would  thus  be  able  to  reach  by  this 
western  route  the  same  shores  of  Hindustan  which 
Gama  had  lately  reached  by  sailing  eastward.  So 
confident  did  he  feel  of  the  success  of  this  enter= 
prise,  that  he  wrote  a  letter  to  Pope  Alexander 
VI.,  renewing  his  vow  to  furnish  troops  for  the  res- 
cue of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.^  It  was  no  doubt  the 
symptom  of  a  reaction  against  his  misfortunes  that 
he  grew  more  and  more  mystical  in  these  days,  con- 
soling himseK  with  the  belief  that  he  was  a  chosen 
instrument  in  the  hands  of  Providence  for  enlarg- 
ing the  bounds  of  Christendom.  In  this  mood  he 
made  some  studies  on  the  projihecies,  after  the  fan- 
tastic fashion  of  his  time,^  and  a  habit  grew  upon 
him  of  attributing  I's  discoveries  to  miraculous 
inspiration  rather  than  to  the  good  use  to  which 
his  poetical  and  scientific  mind  had  put  the  data 
furnished  by  Marco  Polo  and  the  ancient  geogra- 
phers. 

The  armament  for  the  Admiral's  fourth  and  last 
voyage  consisted  of  four  small  caravels,  of  from 
fifty  to  seventy  tons  burthen,  with  crews  crossing  the 
numbering,  all  told,  150  men.  His  ^"*"*'*=- 
brother  Bartholomew,  and  his  younger  son  Ferdi° 
nand,  then  a  boy  of  fourteen,  accompanied  him. 
They  sailed  from  Cadiz  on  the  11th  of  May,  1502, 


1  Navarrtte,  Coleccion,  torn.  ii.  pp.  280-282. 

2  The  MS.  volume  of  notes  on  tlie  prophecies  is  in  the  Colom- 
bina.  There  is  a  description  of  it  in  Navarrete,  torn.  ii.  pp.  200- 
27a. 


606  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

and  finally  left  the  Canaries  behind  on  the  26th  of 
the  same  month.  The  course  chosen  was  the  same 
as  on  the  second  voyage,  and  the  unfailing  trade- 
winds  brought  the  ships  on  the  15th  of  June  to  an 
island  called  Mantinino,  probably  Martinique,  not 
more  than  ten  leagues  distant  from  Dominica. 
The  Admiral  had  been  instructed  not  to  touch  at 
Hispaniola  upon  his  way  out,  probably  for  fear  of 
further  commotions  there  until  Ovando  should  have 
succeeded  in  bringing  order  out  of  the  confusion 
ten  times  worse  confounded  into  which  Bobadilla's 
misgovernment  had  thrown  that  island.  Columbus 
might  stop  there  on  his  return,  but  not  on  his  out- 
ward voyage.  His  intention  had,  therefore,  been, 
on  reaching  the  cannibal  islands,  to  steer  for 
Jamaica,  thence  make  the  short  run  to  "Cochin 
China,"  and  then  turn  southwards.  But  as  one  of 
his  caravels  threatened  soon  to  become  unmanage- 
able, he  thought  himself  justified  in  touching  at 
San  Domingo  long  enough  to  hire  a  sound  vessel 
in  place  of  her.  Ovando  had  assumed  the  govern- 
ment there  in  April,  and  a  squadron  of  26  or  28 
ships,  containing  Roldan  and  Bobadilla,  with  huge 
quantities  of  gold  wrung  from  the  enslaved  Indians, 
was  ready  to  start  for  Spain  about  the  end  of  June. 
In  one  of  these  ships  were  4,000  pieces  of  gold  des- 
tined for  Columbus,  probably,  a  part  of  the  reim- 
bursement that  had  been  promised  him.  On  the 
29th  of  June  the  Admiral  arrived  in  the  harbour 
and  stated  the  nature  of  his  errand.  At  the  same 
time,  as  his  practised  eye  had  detected  the  symp- 
toms of  an  ap";jroacliing  hurricane,  he  requested 
permission  to  stay  in  the  harbour  until  it  should 


l\ 


TUE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      507 

be  over,  and  he  furthermore  sent  to  the  commander 
of  the  fleet  a  friendly  warning  not  to  venture  out 
to  sea  at  present.  His  requests  and  his  warnings 
were  alike  treated  with  contumely.  He  coiumbusnot 
was  ordered  to  leave  the  harbour,  and  8|o°p*it'^8an 
did  so  in  great  indignation.  As  his  ^°"^8o- 
first  care  was  for  the  approaching  tempest,  he  did 
not  go  far  but  found  safe  anchorage  in  a  sheltered 
and  occluded  cove,  where  his  vessels  rode  the  storm 
with  difficulty  but  without  serious  damage.  Mean- 
while the  governor's  great  fleet  had  rashly  put  out 
to  sea,  and  was  struck  with  fatal  fury  by  wind  and 
wave.  Twenty  or  more  ships  went  to  the  bottom, 
with  Bobadilla,  lioldan,  and  most  of  the  Admiral's 
principal  enemies,  besides  all  the  ill-gotten  treas- 
ure ;  five  or  six  shattered  caravels,  unable^  to  pro- 
ceed, found  their  way  back  to  San  Domingo;  of 
all  the  fleet,  only  one  ship  arrived  safe  and  sound 
in  Spain,  and  that,  says  Ferdinand,  was  the  one 
that  had  on  board  his  father's  gold.  Truly  it 
was  such  an  instance  of  poetical  justice  as  one  does 
not  often  witness  in  this  world.  "We  will  not 
inquire  now,"  says  Las  Casas,  who  witnessed  the 
affair,  "into  this  remarkable  divine  judgment,  for 
at  the  last  day  of  the  world  it  will  be  made  quite 
lilear  to  us."^  If  such  judgments  were  more  often 
visited  upon  the  right  persons,  perhaps  the  ways  of 
Providence  would  not  have  so  generally  come  to  be 
regarded  as  inscrutable, 

^  "  Aquesto  tan  gran  juicio  de  Dios  no  curemos  de  espudrifiallo, 
piles  en  el  dia  final  deate  mundo  nos  senl  bien  daro."  Hist,  do 
las  Indias,  torn.  iii.  p.  ;52;  cf.  Vita  dcW  Amvnnujlio,  cap.  Ixxxvii. 
As  Las  Casus  was  then  in  San  Domingo  having  come  out  in  Ovan- 
do's  fleet,  and  as  Ferdinand  Columbus  was  with  his  father,  the 
testimony  is  very  direct" 


608  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

The  hurricane  was  followed  by  a  dead  calm,  dur- 
ing  which  the  Admiral's  -ships  were  carried  by  the 
Arrival  at  c^i^reiits  into  the  group  of  tiny  islands 
ca^peHoudu-  called  the  Queen's  Gardens,  on  the 
south  side  of  Cuba.  With  the  first  f;i^ 
vourable  breeze  he  took  a  southwesterly  course,  in 
order  to  strike  that  Cochin-Chinese  coast  farther 
down  toward  the  Malay  peninsula.  This  brought 
him  directly  to  the  island  of  Guanaja  and  to  Cape 
Honduras,  which  he  thus  reached  without  approach- 
ing the  Yucatan  channel.  ^ 

Upon  the  Honduras  coast  the  Admiral  found 
evidences  of  semi-civilization  with  which  he  was 
much  elated,  — such  as  copper  knives  and  hatchets, 
pottery  of  skilled  and  artistic  workmanship,  and 
cotton  garments  finely  woven  and  beautifully  dyed. 
Here  the  Spaniards  first  tasted  the  chicha,  or  maize 
beer,  and  marvelled  at  the  heavy  clubs,  armed  with 
sharp  blades  of  obsidian,  with  which  the  soldiers 
of  Cortes  were  by  and  by  to  become  unpleasantly 
acquainted.  The  people  here  wore  cotton  clothes, 
and,  according  to  Ferdinand,  the  women  covered 
themselves  as  carefully  as  the  Moorish  women  of 
Granada.2  On  inquiring  as  to  the  sources  of  gold 
and  other  wealth,  the  Admiral  was  now  referred  to 
the  west,  evidently  to  Yucatan  and  Guatemala,  or, 
as  he  supposed,  to  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Gan= 
ges.     Evidently  the  way  to  reach  these  countries 

^  In  the  next  chapter  I  shall  give  some  reasons  for  supposing- 
that  the  Admiral  had  learned  the  existence  of  the  Yucatan  chan- 
nel from  the  pilot  Ledesma,  coupled  with  information  which  made 
it  unlikely  that  a  passage  into  the  Indian  ocean  would  be  found 
that  way.     See  below,  vol.  ii.  p.  92. 

"^  Vita  deW  Ainmiraglio,  cap.  Ixxxviii. 


in 


llian- 
niiide 
sund 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      509 

was  to  keep  the  land  on  the  starboard  and  search 
for  the  passage  between  the  Eden  continent  and 
the  Malay  peninsula.^  This  course  at  first  led 
Columbus  eastward  for  a  greater  number  of  leagues 
than  he  could  have  relished.  Wind  and  current 
were  dead  against  him,  too ;  and  when,  after  forty 
days  of  wretched  weather,  he  succeeded  in  doub^ 
ling  the  cape  which  marks  on  that  coast  c^pe  oraciac 
the  end  of  Honduras  and  the  beginning  *  °"'** 
of  Nicaragua,  and  found  it  turning  square  to  the 
south,  it  was  doubtless  joy  at  this  auspicious 
change  of  direction,  as  well  as  the  sudden  relief 
from  head- winds,  that  prompted  him  to  name  that 
bold  prominence  Cape  Gracias  a  Dios,  or  Thanks 
to  God. 

As  the  ships  proceeded  southward  in  the  direction 
of  Veragua,  evidences  of  the  kind  of  semi-civiliza- 
tion which  we  recognize  as  characteristic  of  that 
part  of  aboriginal  America  grew  more  and  more 
numerous.  Great  houses  were  seen,  built  of  "stone 
and  lime,"  or  perhaps  of  rubble  stone  with  adobe 
mortar.  Walls  were  adorned  with  carvings  and 
pictographs.  Mummies  were  found  in  a  -i.,,g  coast  of 
good  state  of  preservation.  There  were  ^®''*8"*' 
signs  of  abundant  gold;    the  natives  wore  plates 

^  Irving  (vol.  ii.  pp.  .386,  387)  seems  to  think  it  strange  that 
Columbus  did  not  at  once  turn  westward  and  circumnavigate 
Yucatan.  But  if  —  as  Irving  supposed  —  C  lumbus  had  not  seen 
the  Yucatan  channel,  and  regarded  the  Honduras  coast  as  contin- 
uous with  that  of  Cuba,  he  could  only  expect  by  turning  west- 
ward to  be  carried  back  to  Cape  Alpha  and  Omega,  where  he  had 
already  been  twice  before !  In  the  next  chapter,  liowever,  I  shall 
show  that  Columbus  may  have  shaped  his  course  in  accordance 
with  the  advice  of  the  pilot  Ledesma. 


610  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

of  it  hung  by  cotton  cords  about  their  necks,  and 
were  ready  to  exchange  pieces  worth  a  hundred 
ducats  for  tawdry  European  trinkets.  From  these 
people  Columbus  heard  what  we  should  call  the 
first  "news  of  the  Pacific  Ocean,"  though  it  had  no 
such  meaning  to  his  mind.  From  what  he  heard 
he  understood  that  he  was  on  the  east  side  of  a  pe- 
ninsula, and  that  there  was  another  sea  on  the  other 
side,  by  gaining  which  he  might  in  ten  days  reach 
the  mouth  of  the  Ganges.^  By  proceeding  on  his 
present  course  he  would  soon  come  to  a  "narrow 
place  "  between  the  two  seas.  There  was  a  curious 
equivocation  here.  No  doubt  the  Indians  were 
honest  and  correct  in  what  they  tried  to  tell  Co- 
lumbus. But  by  the  "narrow  place"  they  meant 
narrow  land,  not  narrow  water ;  not  a  strait  which 
Fruitless  conncctcd  but  an  isthmus  which  divided 
Sfo?M"'*  the  two  seas,  not  the  Strait  of  Malacca, 
lacca.  |j^^  ^jjg  Istlnnus  of  Daricu  !  ^   Columbus, 

of  course,  understood  them  to  mean  the  strait  for 
which  he  was  looking,  and  in  his  excitement  at 
approaching  the  long-expected  goal  he  pressed  on 
without  waitmg  to  verify  the  reports  of  gold  mines 
in  the  neighbourhood,  a  thing  that  could  be  done 
at  any  time.^     By  the  5th  of  December,  however, 

^  Navarrete,  Coleccion  de  viages,  torn.  i.  p.  209. 

^  Vita  deW  Ammiraglio,  cap.  Ixxxix. ;  Humboldt,  Examen  Cri- 
tique, torn.  i.  p.  350. 

^  "Nothing  could  evince  more  clearly  his  generous  ambition 
than  hurrying  in  this  brief  maimer  along  a  cpast  where  wealth 
•was  to  be  gathered  at  every  step,  for  the  purpose  of  seeking  a 
strait  which,  however  it  might  produce  vast  benefit  to  mankind, 
conld  yield  little  else  to  himself  than  the  gloiy  of  the  discovery." 
Irving's  Columbus,  vol.  ii.  p.  406.     In  this  voyage,  however,  the 


THE  FINDING  OF  STBAI.GE  COASTS.      511 

having  reached  a  point  on  the  isthmus,  a  few 
leagues  east  of  Puerto  Bello,  without  finding  the 
strait,  he  yielded  to  the  remonstrances  of  the  crews, 
and  retraced  his  course  to  Veragua.  If  the  strait 
could  not  be  found,  the  next  best  tidings  to  carry- 
home  to  Spain  would  be  the  certain  information 
of  the  discovery  of  gold  mines,  and  it  was  decided 
to  make  a  settlement  here  which  might 

,  [>         n    ,  .  •  Futile  attempt 

serve  as  a  base  lor  iuture  operations,  to  make  a  set- 
Three  months  of  misery  followed.  Many 
of  the  party  were  massacred  by  the  Indians,  the 
stock  of  food  was  nearly  exhausted,  and  the  ships 
were  pierced  by  worms  until  it  was  feared  there 
would  be  no  means  left  for  going  home.  Accord- 
ingly, it  was  decided  to  abandon  the  enterprise  and 
return  to  Hispaniola.^  In  order  to  allow  for  the 
strong  westerly  currents  in  the  Caribbean  sea,  the 
Atbuiral  first  sailed  eastward  almost  to  the  gulf  ot 
Darien,  and  then  turned  to  the  north.  The  allow- 
ance was  not  enough,  however.  The  ships  were 
again  carried  into  the  Queen's  Gardens,  where 
they  were  caught  in  a  storm  and  nearly  beaten  to 
pieces.  At  length,  on  St.  John's  eve,  June  23, 
1503,  the  crazy  wrecks — now  full  of  water  and 
unable  to  sail  another  league  —  were  beached  on 


Cri- 


express  purpose  from  the  start  was  to  find  the  strait  of  Malacca 
as  a  passage  to  the  very  same  regions  which  had  been  visited  by 
Gama,  and  Columbus  expected  thus  to  get  wealth  enough  to  equip 
aji  army  of  Crusaders.  Irvings  statement  does  not  correctly  de- 
scribe the  Admiral's  purpose,  and  as  savouring  of  misplaced  eulogy; 
is  sure  to  provoke  a  reaction  on  the  part  of  captious  critics. 

^  A  gra^'Uic  account  of  these  sclmics,  in  which  he  took  part, 
is  given  by  Ferdinand  Columbus,  Vita  dell'  Ammiraglio,  cap- 
KciiL-cvL 


612  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

the  coast  of  Jamaica  and  converted  into  a  sort 
Columbus  of  rude  fortress ;  and  while  two  trusty 
«inpwrecked.  h^q^  were  scut  ovcr  to  Sau  Domingo  in 
a  canoe,  to  obtain  relief,  Columbus  and  his  party 
remained  shipwrecked  in  Jamaica.  They  waited 
there  a  wliole  year  before  it  proved  possible  to  get 
any  relief  from  Ovando.  He  was  a  slippery  knave, 
who  knew  how  to  deal  out  promises  without  taking 
the  first  step  toward  fulfihuent. 

It  was  a  terrible  year  that  Columbus  spent  upon 
the  wild  coast  of  Jamaica  To  all  the  horrors 
A  year  of  inseparable  from  such  a  situation  there 
misery.  ^^^  added  the  horror  of  mutiny.     The 

year  did  not  end  until  there  had  been  a  pitched 
battle,  in  which  the  doughty  Bartholomew  was,  as 
usual,  victorious.  The  ringleader  was  captured, 
and  of  the  other  mutineers  such  as  were  not  slain 
in  the  fight  were  humbled  and  pardoned.  At 
length  Ovando's  conduct  began  to  arouse  indigna- 
tion in  San  Domingo,  and  was  openly  condemned 
from  the  pulpit;  so  that,  late  in  June,  1504,  he 
sent  over  to  Jamaica  a  couple  of  ships  which 
brought  away  the  Admiral  and  his  starving  party. 
Ovando  greeted  the  brothers  Columbus  with  his 
customary  hypocritical  courtesy,  which  they  well 
understood.  During  the  past  year  the  island  of 
Hispaniola  had  been  the  scene  of  atrocities  such 
as  have  scarcely  been  surpassed  in  history.  I 
shall  give  a  brief  account  of  them  in  a  future 
chapter.  Columbus  was  not  cheered  by  what  he 
saw  and  heard,  and  lost  no  time  in  starting  for 
Spain.  On  the  7tli  of  November,  1504,  after  a 
tempestuous  voyage  and  narrow  escape  from  ship- 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS,      613 


re 
le 
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a 


vn:eok,  he  landed  at  San  Lucar  de  Rarranieda  and 
made  his  way  to  Seville.     Queen    Isa-  ,,a«t  return  to 
bella  was  then  on    her  death-bed,  and  ^'"^'"" 
breathed  her  last  just  nineteen  days  later. 

The  death  of  the  queen  deprived  Columbus  of 
the  only  protector  who  could  stand  between  him 
and  Fonseca.  The  reimbursement  for  the  wronge 
which  he  had  suffered  at  that  man's  hands  was 
never  made.  The  last  eighteen  months  of  the 
Admiral's  life  were  spent  in  sickness  and  poverty. 
Accumulated  hardship  and  disappointment  had 
broken  him  down,  and  he  died  on  Ascen-  ^g^t,,  q,  co- 
sion  day,  May  20,  150G,  at  Valladolid.  ^"'"''"•'• 
So  little  heed  was  taken  of  his  passing  away  that 
the  local  annals  of  that  city,  "which  give  almost 
every  insignificant  event  from  1333  to  1539,  day 
by  day,  do  not  mention  it."^  His  remains  were 
buried  in  the  Franciscan  monastery  at  Valladolid, 
whence  they  were  removed  in  1513  to  the  monas- 
tery of  Las  Cuevas,  at  Seville,  where  the  body  of 
his  son  Diego,  second  Admiral  and  Viceroy  of  the 
Indies,  was  buried  in  1526.  Ten  years  after  this 
date,  the  bones  of  father  and  son  were  removed  to 
Hispaniola,  to  the  cathedral  of  San  Domingo; 
whence  they  have  since  been  transferred  to  Havana. 
The  result  of  so  many  removals  has  been  to  raise 
doubts  as  to  whether  the  ashes  now  reposing  at 
Havana  are  really  those  of  Columbus  and  his  son; 
and  over  this  question  there  has  been  nnich  critical 
discussion,  of  a  sort  that  we  may  cheerfully  leave 
to  those  who  like  to  spend  their  time  over  such 
trivialities. 

1  Harrisse,  Notes  on  Columbus,  New  York,  18GG,  p.  73. 


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514  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

There  is  a  tradition  that  Ferdinand  and  Isabella, 
at  some  date  unspecified,  had  granted  to  Colum- 
bus, as  a  legend  for  his  coat-of-arms,  the  noble 
motto :  — 

A  Castilla  y  &  Leon 
Nuftvo  mundo  di6  Colon, 

i.  e.  "To  Castile-and-Leon  Columbus  gave  a  New 
World;"  and  we  are  further  told  that,  when  the 
•'  Nuevo  Admiral' s  bones  were  removed  to  Seville, 

Mundo."  ^jjjg  motto  was,  by  order  of  King  Ferdi- 
nand, inscribed  upon  his  tomb.^  This  tradition 
crumbles  under  the  touch  of  historical  criticism. 
The  Admiral's  coat-of-arms,  as  finally  emblazoned 
under  his  own  inspection  at  Seville  in  1502,  quar- 
ters the  royal  Castle-and-Lion  of  the  kingdom  of 
Castile  with  his  own  devices  of  five  anchors,  and  a 
group  of  golden  islands  with  a  bit  of  Terra  Firma, 
upon  a  blue  sea.  But  there  is  no  legend  of  any 
sort,  nor  is  anything  of  the  kind  mentioned  by  Las 
Casas  or  Bernaldez  or  Peter  Martyr.  The  first 
allusion  to  such  a  motto  is  by  Oviedo,  in  1535, 
who  gives  it  a  somewhat  different  turn :  — 

Por  Castilla  y  per  Leon 
Nuevo  mundo  halld  Colon, 

i.  e.  "For  Castile-and-Leon  Columbus  found  a 
New  World."  But  the  other  form  is  no  doubt  the 
better,  for  Ferdinand  Columbus,  at  some  time  not 
later  than  1537,  had  adopted  it,  and  it  maybe  read 
to-day  upon  his  tomb  in  the  cathedral  at  Seville. 
The  time-honoured  tradition  has  evidently  trans- 

^  Vita  del  Ammiragllo,  cap.  cvii.  Thi3  is  nnqiiestion.ably  a 
gloss  of  the  translator  Ulloa.  Cf.  Uarrisse,  Christqphe  Colombo 
torn.  u.  pp.  1  n-llQ. 


THE  FINDING  OF  STRANGE  COASTS.      516 

ferred  to  the  father  the  legend  adopted,  if  not  ori- 
ginally devised,  by  his  son. 


a 

le 


a 


But  why  is  this  mere  question  of  heraldry  a  matter 
of  importance  for  the  historian?  Simply  because 
it  furnishes  one  of  the  most  striking  among  many 
illustrations  of  the  fact  that  at  no  time  during 
the  life  of  Columbus,  nor  for  some  years  after  his 
death,  did  anybody  use  the  phrase  "New  World" 
with  conscious  reference  to  his  discoveries.  At  the 
time  of  his  death  their  true  significance  had  not  yet 
begun  to  dawn  upon  tlie  mind  of  any  voyager  or  any 
writer.  It  was  sui)posed  that  he  had  found  a  new 
route  to  the  Indies  by  sailing  west,  and  that  in  the 
course  of  this  achievement  he  had  discovered  some 
new  islands  and  a  bit  or  bits  of  Terra  Firma  of 
more  or  less  doubtful  commercial  value.  To  group 
these  items  of  discovery  into  an  organic  whole,  and 
to  ascertain  that  they  bclongcnl  to  a  whole  quite 
distinct  from  the  Old  World,  required  the  work 
of  many  other  discoverers,  com])anions  and  succes- 
sors to  Columbus.    In  the  following  chapter  I  shall 


616 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 


endeavour  to  show  how  the  conception  of  tho  New 
World  was  thus  originated  and  at  length  b^jame 
developed  into  the  form  with  which  wo  e^VP  now 
familiar. 


New 
same 

BOW 


